Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown is mad as hell at the FDA, and he's not taking it quietly. According to the senator, U.S. regulators often aren't mentally sharp enough to understand the drugs and devices they're ruling on, and their excessive and arbitrary actions have wound up "crushing" the state's biotech businesses.
Singing to a choir of biotech executives in Boston, one of the biggest drug development hubs in the world, Brown claimed that "It's money, it's time, it's innovation and we're losing out to a lot of what's happening overseas."
The FDA, though, begged to differ with their high profile critic.
"Since 2002, with the exception of 2008, the FDA has approved more original drug products every year...than all the other countries in the world combined," said a spokesperson. "The FDA's times to drug approval are faster than its European counterpart...I don't know how we're losing out to overseas if we're approving them faster than they do in Europe."
- here's the story from the Boston Herald