Political Quotes

“last May, Senator Baucus and I began investigating GlaxoSmithKline regarding their diabetes drug, Avandia. We began this investigation when Dr. Steve Nissen at the Cleveland Clinic published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. That study found a link between Avandia and heart attacks. Shortly after we began our investigation, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former Deputy Commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. In that article, he insinuated that congressional investigators had obtained a copy of the Nissen study before it was published. Dr. Gottlieb suggested that this action called into question the integrity of both congressional investigators and Dr. Nissen. Well, congressional investigators did not get a copy of the Nissen study until it became public. But you can imagine my surprise when I learned that one of GlaxoSmithKline's own consultants leaked a copy of the study to GlaxoSmithKline weeks before it was published. The man who did this is Dr. Steven Haffner. He confirmed to my investigators that he faxed a draft of the study to GlaxoSmithKline weeks before it was published.”