If Only We Knew What the FDA Knows, Or Should Know
There is a vast amount of clinical information sitting in the agency’s archives that could be analyzed and mined to flag worrisome side effects. Multiple years’ worth of clinical trial data from studies of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and many other conditions could be used to answer important questions about drug safety and efficacy. But most of that data is unsearchable, existing in the form of paper submissions or unwieldy electronic files that can’t be downloaded and analyzed.
Full article on the danger of the FDA’s unsearchable drug data files.
What an untapped goldmine! If Google can scan all of the books in the world, then surely the FDA can digitize their records in an easy-to-search manner. If nothing else, it should be able to do this moving forward.
This is very interesting. There is a federal database that is potentialy quite valuable, but it’s untapped.
The information that could shed light on adverse effects is already housed at the FDA but not available for research. No wonder people often blame the FDA when little-known side effects are discovered only after people are harmed.
As a bloated government agency, I am not at all surprised that the FDA does not have its house in order.