Transparency in Health Safety and Product Safety
Health Safety
Public Citizen has worked for more than four decades to make sure there is clear transparency in the American health care system.
Patient Safety
The first goal in good medicine is keeping the patient safe. That means having reasonable access to quality and unbiased information about all aspects of their health care.
Physician Accountability
Public Citizen works toward enhanced accountability in the medical field by physician accountability — analyzing trends in state disciplinary actions across the U.S. and pushing for greater disclosure of disciplinary actions taken against doctors and other health care workers.
Public Citizen report: Incomplete information in as many as 50,000 reports provided to the National Practitioner Data Bank, which serves as a national clearinghouse of transgressions by physicians and other health care providers that are critical to employment and credentialing decisions.
Unethical Trials
The SUPPORT study: A trial that involved randomly assigning premature infants to one of two experimental groups. Researchers tried to keep blood oxygen levels in a high range for one group and a low range for the other. Parents were not informed that this experiment involved substantial risks for their babies, including increased risk of blindness, brain injury and death, depending on which group the babies were in.
- Blog post: Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, details how the editors of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) sacrificed standards to defend the unethical clinical trial.
- Statement: HHS’ response to Public Citizen’s finding of agency misconduct in SUPPORT study doesn’t add up.
- Press Advisory: Press conference to highlight the need for HHS to strengthen the ethical standards by which human experiments are conducted.
- In the wake of controversy of the SUPPORT study, HHS hosts a meeting to look at what risks should be disclosed to participants in clinical trials.
- Letter to HHS: NIH should not censor one of its experts just because he might criticize ethical lapses in an increasingly high-profile study carried out on premature babies.
- Release: The federal government has taken an important step toward addressing a highly unethical trial involving premature babies but still is leaving infants and other subjects at risk by permitting current similar trials to continue.
- Letter to the HHS secretary asking for a personally apologize to the parents of the HHS-funded experiment that exposed babies to risk of death and blindness without informing the parents.
Improved Patient Drug Information Program
Public Citizen petitioned the FDA to ban the distribution of dangerously misleading prescription drug information to the public by pharmacists arguing that drugs were misbranded when dispensed with inaccurate or misleading information. Read the comments, lawsuit and settlement that lead to an open discussion on the Improved Patient Drug Program:
FDA Labeling
Public Citizen petitions FDA for a black box warning on testosterone products to warn patients of cardiovascular risks.
Statement of Dr. Sidney Wolfe: FDA proposal to revise drug labeling regulations is welcome news and will improve drug safety.
Public Citizen report highlights the need to allow generic drug manufacturers to update labeling as they learn of new risks to protect patient safety.
Freedom of Information
Public Citizen files a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requesting the FDA to release all the comments about a proposal that would allow pharmaceutical companies to circumvent labeling rules and tell doctors that the medications’ risks are lower than they actually are.
Public Citizen petitioned the FDA to stop its longstanding practice of redacting portions of documents released to FOIA requesters without giving requesters an immediate right to appeal within the agency.
Conflict of Interest
It's often hard to tell when drug companies pay doctors lavish speaking fees and when medical journal authors do work for drug companies. But these payments and relationships have the potential to influence what drugs doctors prescribe.
Clinical Trials Design
A policy study of clinical trial registries and results database as evidence exists that pharmaceutical companies have suppressed unfavorable data.
Drug Promotion
Read about how Public Citizen went to court to enforce a Vermont law requiring drug companies to report the value and nature of gifts they give doctors and hospitals to the Vermont Attorney General.
Read our testimony before the Senate Special Committee on Aging in support of state laws requiring the disclosure of pharmaceutical company payments to physicians.
Congressional testimony on state laws requiring disclosure of pharmaceutical company payments to physicians.
Medical Safety vs. Corporate Profits
Public Citizen and other groups sent a letter to lawmakers warning that a provision in the 2012 Food and Drug Administration Reform Act would block public access to potentially important health and safety information should be removed or substantially narrowed.
Read our 2002 comments on disclosure of conflicts of interest for participants in FDA advisory committee.
Read more
about our work to protect patients by uncovering these conflicts of interest.
Drug Manufacturing and Approval Process
Keeping Dangerous Drugs Off the Market
Read our 2012 letter to the FDA addressing failures to disclose new drug application approval packages in a timely manner.
Our 2010 recommendations to the FDA on how the agency can alert the public to dangers and promote scientific innovation at the same time.
Our 2009 testimony before the FDA Transparency Task Force encouraging greater transparency.
When the FDA released documents related to its evaluation of the safety and effectiveness of the drug Bextra, it withheld key portions. Public Citizen sued the FDA and won.
Read our 2001 comments on disclosure of information on investigational products.
Read our 2001 comments on the FDA’s proposed changes to disclosure of information from FDA Advisory Committee.
Public Citizen took the FDA to court to try to get information concerning pre-clinical and clinical studies for prescription drugs, in which clinical trials were discontinued because of death or serious injury.
In a letter Public Citizen called for a congressional investigation to find out who at the FDA knew about the status of a tamper-resistant hydrocodone product that had already been developed, when the FDA approved a dangerous, high-dose, non-tamper-resistant opioid known as Zohydro ER.
Compounding Drug Manufacturing
- Read Public Citizen comments submitted to the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding compounding pharmacy legislation.
- Public Citizen to Congress: Proposed compounding pharmacy legislation would be a major step backward for U.S. drug safety, efficacy and accurate labeling.
Off-Label Use of Drugs
Public Citizen went to court to get information regarding records of off-label, unapproved uses of previously approved drugs and biologics.
Transparency in Product Safety
Public Citizen works to make sure Americans are protected from unsafe products and fights for clearer transparency regarding consumer product safety.
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Imagine a database accessible by anyone in the country and that contains a treasure trove of information about dangerous products that have harmed people. Such a database exists — it was created as part of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. Public Citizen pushed hard to ensure that consumers can warn others about dangers — and that the government and manufacturers respond.
- Public Citizen praises the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which remains transparent in making sure that numerous products are safe for everyone, from infants to adults.
Stalled Rulemaking Regarding Consumer Protections
Release: Calling out the Obama administration for stalling a crucial auto safety rule in an obscure White House office for a year and a half, where the public couldn’t see what was going on.
Public Citizen report: Public pays price as eight key food safety, financial, worker safety and environmental rules held up.
Company Doe v. Public Citizen
A company sued to keep a complaint about one of its products out of a database created by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and persuaded a district court judge to adjudicate the matter in secret, sealing documents pertaining to the case and permitting the company to use the pseudonym “Company Doe.” Public Citizen objected to the seal.
- Statement: Ergobaby exposed as the “company doe” that spend two and a half years in secret litigation to prevent a negative report about Ergobaby’s baby carrier from going into the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s online product safety database.
- Advisory: Public Has Right to Know Identity of ‘Company Doe,’ Access Court Records in Consumer Product Database Case, Public Citizen to Tell Federal Appellate Court.
- Release: Fourth Circuit: Injury to Corporate Reputation Not Enough to Justify Sealing Court Case.