fda_drugs(): queries the official FDA drug database

[JeetVaria]

First, thank you for all the excellent work to date; your recent publications (e.g., https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.26.26349444v1.full.pdf) for data mining of FAERS have provided much inspiration. The tutorials are excellent.

I am currently using it for data mining of FAERS for pharmacovigilance of various psychotropic pharmaceuticals.

The standardisation with MedDRA and “data_dedup” run perfectly; however, I have hit a bottleneck for the function “fda_drugs()” and receive an error:

"Downloading file from: https://www.fda.gov/media/89850/download?attachment
trying URL 'https://www.fda.gov/media/89850/download?attachment'
Error in utils::download.file(urls, destfile = file_paths, ...) :
cannot open URL 'https://www.fda.gov/media/89850/download?attachment'
In addition: Warning messages:
1: In utils::download.file(urls, destfile = file_paths, ...) :
downloaded length 0 != reported length 10
2: In utils::download.file(urls, destfile = file_paths, ...) :
cannot open URL 'https://www.fda.gov/apology_objects/abuse-detection-apology.html': HTTP status was '404 Not Found'
Called from: utils::download.file(urls, destfile = file_paths, ...)"

Any help for work around would be appreciated.

Thank you again!