By Leslie Gevirtz

BOSTON, (Reuter) A consumer group lashed out Thursday at moves by the U.S.
Senate to pass a bill they said would ''castrate'' the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA).

The Senate was expected to vote next month on a measure that a former editor
of a respected medical journal said would take away much of the FDA's
authority.

``This bill is not designed to improve the FDA. It's to castrate it, get it
out of the regulatory business,'' Dr. Arnold Relman, former editor of the New
England Journal of Medicine, said Thursday at a news conference by the Public
Citizen consumer group.

The measure was expected to come before the full Senate in September, Joe
Karpinsky, a spokesman for the Labor and Human Resources Committee, said. He
added it was voted out of the committee 144.

The bill would expand the FDA's use of third parties to review new medical
devices, allow food labels to include health claims by scientific government
agencies other than the FDA, and expedite access to some drugs or devices
still under FDA review to patients facing lifethreatening illness