WASHINGTON — One could say that a job with the Food and Drug Administration would be the perfect way to get information about upcoming drug approvals and use it to profit handsomely from buying stock in the companies that manufacture the drugs before the information reaches the public.

Of course, the Securities and Exchange Commission would consider that illegal insider trading, as one FDA scientist recently discovered.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the SEC charged FDA chemist Liang Chengyi with insider trading on 19 publicly traded companies. The SEC alleged that Liang, an FDA employee since 1996, used confidential information about drug approvals to trade on stocks before it was officially announced, making more than $3.6 million in profits.