Sidney M. Wolfe, MD, who fought the FDA and pharmaceutical industry over high drug prices and dismissed health hazards for more than four decades, died at 86 years old, The New York Times reported.
He died Jan. 1 because of a brain tumor, according to his wife, Suzanne Goldberg, PsyD.
Dr. Wolfe and advocate Ralph Nader founded the Health Research Group in 1971 to publicize healthcare issues. A few months before officially founding the policy research organization, Dr. Wolfe penned a letter to the FDA about contaminated IV bags made by Abbott Laboratories. Two days after sending the letter to news outlets, about two million bags were recalled.
The IV case "led me to think that there were an awful lot of problems that had been well documented, but no one had done anything about them," he told The Washington Post in 1989. "It seemed more interesting to me to try to do these things than to do research." He then urged the FDA to ban Red Dye No. 2 because of its potential carcinogen status.
For the next 40-odd years, the Health Research Group amassed influential power along with tips and leaks from physicians and researchers. Dr. Wolfe spearheaded hundreds of projects, leading to market removals of more than a dozen drugs and updated warning labels to dozens of others. Spotlighting issues with contact lenses, pacemakers, tampons, cigarettes and toothpaste were also on his to-do list over the years.
Each month, he published a newsletter called "Outrage of the Month," and his self-published book "Worst Pills, Best Pills: A Consumer’s Guide to Avoiding Drug-Induced Death or Illness" became a bestseller in 1980. His critics called him a "gadfly" and a "zealot."
Before forming the Health Research Group, Dr. Wolfe served in the Public Health Service, researched addiction at the National Institutes of Health, and worked with the Medical Committee for Human Rights, a group of healthcare professionals active in the civil rights movement.
He also served on an FDA committee from 2008 to 2012, and he retired from the Health Research Group in 2013.