Back in July, in response to the formation of the FDA's Transparency Task Force, I wrote a posting called "When Transparency is Easy – Advisory Committee Transparency". The point made was that while it used to be quite easy to access information about the FDA's CDER advisory committees, it had in fact become harder. The rosters of the committees used to have hot links to the CVs of the members. In July when I counted them, there were only links for about half the members.
A thoughtful reader suggested that I note this on the Transparency blog as a comment to the question how the FDA could be more transparent on its Web site. I did in mid-July, but 3 weeks later the comment was not posted, in spite of the fact that there were comments posted after I had entered mine.
Today there is an update.
I'm very happy to report that this morning I combed through the CDER Advisory Committee rosters, and with a few exceptions such as the Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee and the Pharmaceutical Science Committees, almost all of the CVs are now hot linked to the names of the advisory committee members.
And also thanks to a thoughtful reader who sent me an email, I found that my comment on the FDA's transparency blog has also been posted. Nice.
Unfortunately, there is still work to be done. A review of the Blood, Vaccines and Other Biologics Committees consisting of the Allergenic Products Advisory Committee, the Blood Products Advisory Committee, the Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapy Advisory Committee, the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Committee and the Vaccines and Related Biologics Products Advisory Committee has not got a single hotlink to a single member's CV. So while Drugs now have near complete transparency, biologics has virtually none. That is not good, particularly in a time when vaccines have been so much in the news.
Progress, but not quite there yet. Keep it up FDA.
