Rx Roulette
Reporters from ProPublica uncovered how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has quietly allowed certain medications to flow into the country from known substandard overseas factories and failed to routinely test these drugs for safety or quality, putting the public at risk. The series also revealed that basic information about where generic drugs are made is fragmented, obscured, and effectively inaccessible to consumers, even though generics account for about 90% of U.S. prescriptions.
The team, which included members of ProPublica’s data and news apps teams and over a dozen students from the Medill Investigative Lab, filed almost 50 FOIA requests and sued the FDA to obtain records, ultimately constructing a database of 40,000 generic medications and their factory inspection histories – the first comprehensive list of drugs shipped from banned factories.
Citing the investigation, leaders of the Senate Special Committee on Aging proposed bipartisan reforms and demanded more testing, transparency, and a full accounting of exemptions. The FDA commissioner pledged changes and a tougher stance on foreign plants.
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