Republican congressmen made a troubling move on Monday, voting in a private meeting to severely weaken the House’s independent ethics panel one day before the new GOP-led Congress was set to get to work. Republicans sought to make the non-partisan Office of Congressional Ethics subject to oversight by the House Ethics Committee, which is run by lawmakers, the very people the Office of Congressional Ethics is meant to police.
Category: Susan Collins
Senators urge action to block drastic drug price hikes
Angered by skyrocketing drug prices, a pair of senators on Wednesday urged Congress to block companies from cornering the market on old, off-patent drugs. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., released findings from a year-long investigation into companies like Turing Pharmaceuticals, which generated national outrage last year after hiking the price of a life-saving anti-infection drug by more than 5,000 percent.
FDA Increases Transparency of Adverse Event Data for Cosmetics and Foods
On December 6th, FDA announced that it is publicly releasing data received by the Agency’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition about adverse events related to cosmetics and foods, including both conventional foods and dietary supplements. Adverse events can be any negative reaction to a product, such as a serious illness or allergic reactions, or other complaints like packaging problems, that are received through FDA’s voluntary adverse event reporting systems for these classes of regulated products .