Things are so bad with the Food and Drug Administration’s clinical trial system for approving new drugs that the country is “virtually defenseless” from preventing another Vioxx scandal. This finding, and many others regarding dangerous conflicts of interest in the FDA process, are reported in a new study by the Government Accountability Project (GAP). The report says the FDA has suffered from a lack of funding since 1992, while the pharmaceutical industry has grown into a money-making machine earning $40 billion in profits in 2006 for the top 10 companies. With fewer dollars to properly test new drugs, the FDA has been forced to “heavily rely on fees it receives from the very industry it is supposed to regulate,” which gives drug companies considerable leverage in getting federal regulators to rush drug approvals at the sacrifice of product safety, according to GAP.