The canine medicine Proheart 6 brought its maker over 35 million dollars before an FDA veterinarian, Dr. Victoria Hampshire, discovered that dogs who had been given the medication had suffered liver damage, autoimmune diseases, and seizures. Almost 500 of them died. Dr. Hampshire exercised her responsibility as a safety officer at FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine and reported on the product’s dangers. But the manufacturer was not stopped—Hampshire was.

The international pharmaceutical giant that made Proheart 6 hired a private detective to look for negative information about her and start a smear campaign. When the company went to the head of the FDA with a presentation geared to discredit her, the agency removed her from the Proheart 6 case, with no opportunity to respond to the company’s charges, and launched a secret FDA investigation.

Though proved innocent of all charges, Hampshire was not officially exonerated, was prohibited from investigating any products made by this company, and was transferred to another FDA center. The company went right on with its campaign to destroy her professional reputation among her fellow veterinarians.

Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa has taken up Hampshire’s defense, and that of all the conscientous federal regulators who actually do their jobs, despite the powerful interference of the companies they are charged to regulate. On the Senate floor he decried the pharmaceutical industry’s attacks on FDA staffers in the companies’ drive to get positive reports on their products, no matter what the truth might be. “Dr. Hampshire’s hard work and dedication to science and drug safety placed a bull’s-eye on her reputation and career,” he told the Senate. He’s calling for an FDA that serves the people, not the pharmaceutical industry.