Friedman ambushed

WASHINGTON - House Government Reform and Oversight Chairman Dan Burton (R-Ind.) ambushed acting FDA Commissioner Michael Friedman with an attack on the agency's protections for clinical trial subjects.

Friedman had been asked to testify at a long-planned hearing on patient access to therapeutics. But responding to newspaper articles reporting that fenfluramine had been administered to children in FDA-approved experiments after the drug had been withdrawn from the obesity market, Burton changed the topic to a critique of the FDA's handling of clinical trial subjects...