Even consumers' and patients' representatives on the committees often receive drug company money. At 88 of those meetings, at least half the advisory committee members had financial interests in the topic being evaluated . Powerful panels Eighteen FDA advisory committees play a crucial role in nearly every major decision on drug regulation. They help decide what drugs should be approved and how the pharmaceutical industry should be regulated. In recent years, the FDA has followed every advisory committee recommendation to approve or reject a medicine - except once , FDA spokeswoman Susan Cruzan says.
Investors follow advisory committees closely.
A committee vote can add or subtract hundreds of millions of dollars from a drug company's stock market value. The FDA is required by law to screen all committee members for financial conflicts. The federal agency is forbidden from using experts with financial conflicts unless a waiver is granted, usually on the grounds that the experts' value outweighs the seriousness of the conflict. The FDA grants these waivers routinely. Seventy-one other times, members had financial conflicts that were voluntarily disclosed but did not require a waiver.