Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves drugs for sale in the United States when it determines that the clinical benefits of a drug outweigh its potential health risks. To make this decision, FDA reviews supporting data collected from several thousand patients during the drug's development. Once a drug is approved for marketing and used by potentially thousands of patients, however, the type, rate, and severity of adverse events caused by the drug can be much different than those seen during the drug's development. In some cases, FDA or drug manufacturers have removed from the market drugs that have been shown to have unacceptable health risks once they were in widespread use. GAO found that 10 prescription drugs have been withdrawn from the U.S. market since January 1, 1997. Eight of the 10 prescription drugs posed greater health risks for women than for men: four of these may have led to more adverse events in women because they were prescribed more often to women than to men, while the other four had more adverse events in women even though they were widely prescribed to both men and women. …

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Education and GAO conducted a study of the feasibility of using alternative financial instruments for determining lender yields on student loans. Chapter one of the report provides an overview of federal student loan programs and their participants. Chapters two and three contain the analyses of the historical liquidity of the market for four types of financial instruments. Chapter four analyzes recent changes in the liquidity of the market for each financial instrument in a balanced federal budget and low interest rate environments, and projections of future liquidity assuming the federal budget remains in balance. Finally, Chapter five presents GAO's and Education's analyses of the remaining three issues enumerated in the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1998 and addresses the question of any possible risks or benefits to the student loan programs and to student borrowers."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In response to concerns about the professionalism and conduct of some Department of Justice attorneys, as well as the process of holding them accountable to ethical standards, this report provides information on Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). GAO obtained information on the types of allegations OPR was able to substantiate against attorneys, the source of the allegations, the specific allegations, and OPR's recommendations for disciplinary actions. OPR generally placed its findings in the attorneys' official personnel folder, either temporarily or permanently, depending on the severity of misconduct. OPR said that although some attorneys under investigation retired or resigned from the Department, it was unable to determine whether they left because of the investigation. Those attorneys would deny that their departure was triggered by the investigation, and OPR officials said it would be difficult to establish a cause-an-effect relationship. OPR would, however, continue the investigation if other Justice employees were involved or if the allegations were serious. When OPR administratively closed a case because the issues were before the courts, it flagged these cases in its tracking system so that it could continue its investigations at a later …