GAO finds FDA unable to monitor off-label marketing

WASHINGTON The Government Accountability Office has released a report about off-label prescribing, the common practice among doctors of prescribing drugs for treatments not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, requested an investigation by the GAO, which found that the FDA didn’t have staff working full-time to monitor illegal off-label marketing by drug companies, instead assigning the task to the office that monitors drug advertising.

Off-label marketing by drug companies is illegal, though off-label prescribing by doctors is not.