FDA Staffers Sue Agency

Current and former employees of the US Food and Drug Administration have filed suit, alleging that their employer spied on them for whistleblowing.

Written byBob Grant
| 1 min read

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Six people who had served on scientific review committees for the US Food and Drug Administration's Center for Devices and Radiological Health have filed a lawsuit against the government agency, claiming that the FDA used spyware to take screenshots of their personal emails and fired some of the plaintiffs for leaking information on potentially unsafe medical devices to the US Congress and the press.

FDA officials allegedly approved some cancer-screening devices—among them tools for detecting breast and colon cancer—even after members of the review committees advised against doing so. When the plaintiffs, who include doctors, researchers, and a statistician, complained to Congress in 2008, the FDA began "ordering, coercing, and intimidating FDA physicians and scientists to recommend approval, and then retaliating when the physicians and ...

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Meet the Author

  • From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.

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