In 2010 and 2011, the senators noted, the FDA had awarded more than $2.4 million in contracts to McKinsey to design a system called “track and trace” to enhance the agency’s ability to identify drugs harmful to consumers. Those contracts “strongly suggest that McKinsey, while representing the FDA, was actively engaging with its private-sector clients that were the targets of this new regulatory process—an obvious conflict of interest,” the letter said.
