Debbie Cenziper

The latest inspection comes 2 1/2 years after the agency allowed Sun Pharma to keep shipping some drugs to Americans even after banning the factory from the U.S. market because of quality problems.

Beyond staff cuts, the departures of some longtime investigators in recent months have left less experienced people tasked with rooting out dangerous manufacturing practices.

ProPublica spent 14 months investigating the FDA’s oversight of foreign drugmakers that send medications to the U.S. These are the key takeaways.

When Joe DeMayo’s donated kidney started to fail earlier than expected, he didn’t know that the drug he was taking could’ve left him vulnerable — and that one of the most formidable drug regulators in the world may have failed to protect him.

A ProPublica investigation found that for more than a decade, the FDA gave substandard factories banned from the United States a special pass to keep sending drugs to an unsuspecting public.

Our investigation exposed a little-known practice inside the FDA that allowed more than 150 drugs or their ingredients into the U.S. over the past dozen years even though they were made at factories banned from shipping their products here.

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals issued seven recalls for pills that didn’t dissolve properly, records show. All were made at the same factory in India. But the FDA still hasn’t stopped the company from shipping other pills made there to the U.S.

As Philips reassured patients that millions of recalled machines were safe, internal emails show federal regulators privately told the company its testing didn’t account for the impact of long-term harm from tainted devices.

The breathing machine manufacturer has faced relentless criticism over its handling of the 2021 recall of millions of devices. Philips must meet the requirements outlined in an agreement with the Justice Department before it can resume sales.

Sens. Dick Durbin and Richard Blumenthal sent a letter noting how the agency missed opportunities to protect the public from faulty medical devices, citing reporting by ProPublica and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.