U.S. Senator Looks into Leaked Drug Study

Jan 30, 02:31 PM

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, made the request Wednesday in a letter to Christopher Viehbacher, president of GlaxoSmithKline's U.S. division.

The incident involved a peer reviewer for The New England Journal of Medicine -- Steven Haffner of the University of Texas Health Science Center --who leaked a damaging study concerning GSK's diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone) to the pharmaceutical firm ahead of the report's publication last May.

The study reported a link between heart attacks and the drug that controls glucose levels in diabetics.

Haffner faxed the report 17 days before its publication to a GSK employee whom he knew from working on an earlier clinical trial of the drug. But Haffner said no one asked him to send GSK the study's results.

Why I sent it is a mystery, Haffner told the journal Nature. I don't really understand it. I wasn't feeling well. It was bad judgment. U.S. Senator Looks into Leaked Drug Study
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