Coast Independent Review Board suspends drug studies

After approving a scam drug trial (that its competitors rejected) in a government sting operation, Coast agreed on April 15 to suspend its operations. The Company's CEO, one pompous and bombastic Dan Dueber, initially complained to Congress that his company had been defrauded by the FDA; now he says "Coast IRB is changing everything... revamping every aspect of the Company."  In other words, creating a company to do the work it had been paid to do for the past five years:  investigators told Congress the company had earned $9.3 million dollars in 2008, and approved 355 of 356 study proposals it had reviewed in the past five years (including the one make-believe proposal that finally got it in trouble). 

Sounds like someone was pocketing too much of that multimillion dollar income and not spending it on real investigation.  Hopefully we've seen the last of Dueber and his company.  Its incredible to think that our drug safety is dependent on a regulatory scheme that relies upon operations like this.