The Raw Story is reporting that Cetero Research – a Houston pharmaceutical firm that conducted research for drug companies around the world – was investigated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2010. The testing facility’s president bluntly acknowledged that the majority of the lab’s work was fraudulent. Based on the results of the investigation, the FDA concluded that Cetero’s violations were so serious and pervasive that all of its studies conducted between April 2005 and August 2009 were essentially worthless.
Around 100 drugs – including prescription painkillers and chemotherapy compounds – had been approved for sale based at least in part on Cetero’s tainted tests. Most of the drugs were generic versions of brand-name drugs (e.g. ibuprofen), which Cetero researchers tested to determine whether the generic versions did in fact have the same bodily effect as the original drugs.
You would expect the FDA to move quickly to order new tests and publicly warn both patients and doctors. Instead, they handled the matter in secret, evaluating the medicines themselves with little to no public disclosure of what had been discovered at Cetero Houston. They did not pull any of the drugs from the market – not even temporarily. To this day, certain Cetero-tested drugs remain on the market despite there being no scientific evidence to back up their safety and efficacy.
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