The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Federal Drug Administration (FDA)" ...
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"Mercury taints skin lighteners"
The Tribune decided to investigate a tip found in a New York Times story that suggested mercury might be present in certain beauty products. The Tribune tested 50 different skin-lightening creams purchased from various locations around Chicago and found that six contained enough mercury to be banned by federal law. When used over time, mercury can be cause health problems, including kidney damage.
Tags: mercury; skin-lightening cream; U.S. Food and Drug Administration; FDA; FOIA; Mercury Policy Project; EcoWaste Coalition
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Do It Yourself Plastic Surgery
Prescription strength chemicals and other procedures should not be done at home without a doctor. A number of websites are selling such products at a discount rate and many people are buying them and facing devastating consequences. These products are unapproved and experts say using these can result in “blindness, paralysis, or death”.
Tags: Botox; syringes; prescriptions; drugs; money; medications; medicine; Federal Drug Administration (FDA); skin
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Trouble on the Tray
This series found problems in the federal, state, and local programs that supplied food to the nation’s schoolchildren. Some of the major findings: beef supplied for school lunches wouldn’t pass at national fast-food restaurants, chicken found at schools is only quality enough for pet food, supplied recalled beef to schools, failed to inform schools of bad tortillas, and many schools lacked the two inspections per year.
Tags: Food safety; Schoolchildren; Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Schools; Cafeteria; Government; Lunch; Beef; Children; Food; Bad food; E. coli
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Food Safety
Recently the food industry has been searching for cheaper ingredients, but this increases the risk to consumers' safety. In this series, they look at foods from peanuts to hamburgers. Furthermore, the federal agencies who examine the food industry have flaws, which weaken their attempts to improve food safety.
Tags: Food; Food industry; Safety; Food safety; Risk; Consumers; Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Inspectors; ConAgra Foods; E. coli
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Unapproved Drugs
The government is paying millions for risky medications that have never been reviewed for safety and effectiveness but are still covered under Medicaid, an Associated Press analysis of federal data has found. Tax payers have shelled out at least $200 million since 2004 for such drugs. Yet the Food and Drug Administration says unapproved prescription drugs are a public health problem, and some unapproved medications have been dozens of deaths. Millions of private patients are taking them as well, and their availability may create a false sense of security. The AP analysis found that Medicaid, which serves low-income people, paid nearly $198 million from 2004 to 2007 for more than 100 unapproved drugs. Data for 2008 were not available but unapproved drugs still are being sold. The AP checked the medications against FDA databases, using agency guidelines to determine if they were unapproved. The FDA says there may be thousands of such drugs on the market. The medications are mainly for common conditions like colds ad pain. They date back decades, before the FDA tightened its review of its review of drugs in the early 1960s. The FDA says it is trying to squeeze them from the market, but conflicting federal laws allow the Medicaid health program for low-income people to pay for them.
Tags: Medicaid; unapproved medicine; medical reporting; Food and Drug Administration; prescription drugs; medical review
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The Killer Cure
Thousands of patients have died as a result of the Food and Drug Administration, along with drug companies, have failed to warn Americans about the dangers of methadone. People are overdosing on methadone, and federal officials hired a doctor on the payroll of a methdaone maker to report on the number of deaths each year.
Tags: FDA; OD; poison; oxycontin; prescription drug; heroin; opium
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Are these diet pills deadly?
Glamour reports on a decade-long lack of action by the FDA against the drug ephedra. The writers charge the drug industry with stalling the government on both state and federal levels. The story also exposes the ways in which some manufacturers purportedly proved their products were safe and effective, documenting how little research had ever been done on ephedra-based supplements and debunking the single study most often cited by the industry. The story also talks about how marketers continued to use flimsy evidence to make claims about their products efficacy....claims that were unanimously voted to be false and scientifically impossible by the Federal Trade Commission.
Tags: ephedra; diet supplements; U.S. Food and Drug Administration; ephedra-based supplements; Federal Trade Commission; Rand Corporation; Health and Human Services; herbal supplement; FDA; National Football League; National Collegiate Athletic Association; American Medical Association; consumer-advocacy groups; Xenadrine; Hydroxycut; Metabolife International Inc.; Metabolife; fen-phen; Dietary supplement Health and Education Act; DSHEA; Public Citizen's Health Research Group; Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders; diet pill; Ephedra Education Council; AER; adverse event report; Center for Drug Evaluation and Research
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Hepatitis C: Silent Alarm
This series documented the government's numerous failures to warn the American public about hepatitis C, a disease that has infected more than 4 million people in the United States. The series found that the federal government promised repeatedly to raise a public alarm about the disease but reneged almost every time. As a result, most people with hepatitis C don't even know they have it and may be spreading it. The series also found that Congress and CDC give hepatitis C a fraction of the funding and attention they give other disease such as West Nile, that has killed several hundreds. The government promised a search to find nearly two hundred thousand patients who received infected blood transfusions before 1992, when a test was available to screen out infected blood, but four years later, the campaign had stalled. The blood industry in the 1980's delayed a screening test six years that could have prevented hepatitis C in more than 300,000 patients who received blood transfusions. the government never ordered the test even though it was aware of the seriousness of the disease.
Tags: hepatitis c; virus; AIDS; public alarm; Congress; Center for Disease Control and Prevention; HCV; funding; West Nile; infected blood transfusions; infected blood; blood industry; screening test; donated blood; CDC; CDC spending; HCV money; National Institute of Health; Health and Human Services; U.S. Food and Drug Administration; FDA's Office of Blood Research and Review; Blood Products Advisory Committee; Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability; blood banks; Community Blood Center of Kansas City; Oklahoma Blood Institute
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Outbreak
The San Francisco Examiner reports that "more than 150 patients - perhaps many more - suffered debilitating infections that were later linked in public records to their physicians' use of ordinary medical sutures allegedly contaminated with infectious bacteria." The Examiner found "... alleged negligence on the part of a surgical manufacturer and inaction by federal regulators responsible for ensuring the safety of medical products."
Tags: CAR FDA Food and Drug Administration Medical Device Reports Johnson & Johnson
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Worry About Your Wireless?
ABC News 20/20 reports that "For years, executives of the $200 billion cellular phone industry have assured the millions who use their products that cell phones - and the microwave energy they emit - are completely safe and pose no health risk whatsoever. But a four-month ABC News 20/20 investigation uncovered startling new scientific evidence that directly challenged this presumption and revealed that some of the nation's most commonly used cell phones actually exceed the maximum radiation safety levels established by the federal government."