Quick Picks: Drugmakers’ Donations and Dangerous Car Seats — ProPublica

Quick Picks: Drugmakers’ Donations and Dangerous Car Seats

by Alexandra Andrews

March 2, 2009, 1:41 p.m. EST

Quick Picks focuses on a select few of the day's stories from "Breaking on the Web."

A tax form mistakenly released by the IRS shows that the pharmaceutical industry gave $172,500 in 2007 to a charity Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) helped found, reports the Washington Times. Melanie Sloan, head of political watchdog group CREW, called donations to lawmakers' charities "another way to curry favor," but Hatch told the Times, "[M]y limited involvement [with the charity] consists mainly of attending their events."
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conducted crash tests involving infant car seats in which "nearly half of the seats either separated from their bases or exceeded injury limits," but it never publicized those results, even to some of the car seat makers, reports the Chicago Tribune. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he had ordered a "complete top to bottom review of child safety seat regulations" and directed staff to make the crash-test results "more available" to consumers.

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