The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the FDA moved too slowly in reviewing ads on products ranging from impotence remedies to incontinence pills, and too slowly in trying to stop misleading ads. According to the GAO, drug companies spent $4.2 billion on such ads in 2005. The GAO found that the FDA issues only 19 regulatory letters in 2003 and 2004, and the covered materials had been in the market for an average of 8 months already. Furthermore, drug companies sometimes ignored the regulatory letters anyway.

[Ed. note: We urge all readers to contact their representatives in the US Congress and demand that the FDA begin effectively protecting consumers or be dismantled. Why should taxpayers fund an agency that functions almost exclusively to support the enormously profitable pharmaceutical industry?]