The law that requires drug companies to pay “user fees” to the US Food and Drug Administration for every drug they submit for approval should not be renewed when it comes before Congress later this year, says a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Writing an open editorial in the Boston Globe, Marcia Angell, who worked for the journal between 1979 and 2000, most recently as editor in chief, said that the Prescription Drug User Fee Act has, in effect, “put the FDA on the payroll of the industry it regulates” (www.boston.com, 26 Feb, “Taking back the FDA”).

The act, which was passed by Congress in 1992, “put the fox in the chicken coop” and has changed the focus of the agency, which now serves the industry rather …