News release: “Senator Max Baucus, Chairman of the Committee on Finance, and Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member, today released a committee report based on a two year inquiry of the diabetes drug Avandia. The senators also asked the Food and Drug Administration to describe what steps the agency has taken to protect patients in an ongoing Avandia clinical trial, and why the study is allowed to continue, given that the FDA itself estimated that the drug caused approximately 83,000 excess heart attacks between 1999 and 2007. In 2008, FDA officials called the clinical trial, as then-designed, “unethical and exploitative” of patients.”