already been leveled, town homes rising in its place.

While Fabre failed to reply to questions and messages delivered by telephone, e-mail and fax from the Houston Press (other than to say he would not respond), Fabre's D.C.-based attorney, a specialist in FDA investigations, wrote the FDA that Fabre had been misled about the severity of the allegations against him by FDA investigators. What's worse, "totally inconsistent with these assurances, the NIDPOE letter essentially falsely accuses Dr. Fabre of letting a patient die," Farquhar wrote on March 7. In all of Fabre's 400 clinical trials involving about 200,000 patients, the death of Zhirakarov was the "one and only untoward event of significance," he added.

Point by point, Farquhar's letter takes issue with the FDA's complaint. Patient 059 did not sufferprolonged hypertension, Farquhar wrote, and renal failure was not determined until after the autopsy. "The patient was appropriately evaluated and treated based on what was known at the time," he added.

A more contrite Fabre wrote the FDA on March 23, informing them of operational changes being made. Staff, for instance, had been instructed to alert him immediately if they ever observe the heart rate of a subject taking clozapine race past 120 beats per minute. But he went on to dispute the FDA's findings, stating that what problems do exist at his clinics are related to record keeping, not any lack of involvement on his part.

However, problems continued after the death, according to a March FDA inspection that found numerous failures to record or investigate adverse drug reactions