FDA sending far fewer warning letters to pharma

This came out on a Friday afternoon, but should not be lost in the black hole of weekend news.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The drug industry has been grumbling over how tough on safety the FDA is these days, but by one measure the agency has fallen off significantly a few years ago. The number of warning letters the FDA sends out has been cut in half in recent years. ...

David Kessler, who ran the FDA during the Clinton years, said the decline is something of a flag. “The number of warning letters has always been one of the surrogate measures of FDA’s enforcement performance,� he said. “It’s not the only measure, but any significant drop raises significant questions of what’s going on.�