Trump to select Scott Gottlieb, a physician with deep drug-industry ties, to run the FDA

Source: Washington Post

Trump to select Scott Gottlieb, a physician with deep drug-industry ties, to run the FDA

By Laurie McGinley and Carolyn Y. Johnson March 10 at 2:07 PM

President Trump is expected to pick Scott Gottlieb, a conservative physician and businessman with deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, a person familiar with the nomination said Friday.

If confirmed, Gottlieb would bring a strong pro-industry, deregulatory approach to an agency that Trump has criticized as being overly restrictive. But he is also viewed as someone who would preserve the agency's basic function: to ensure that drugs are proven to be safe and effective before they are allowed to be sold.

His selection would be a victory for the mainstream pharmaceutical industry, which has little appetite for upending the FDA approval process. Even Democratic critics of the industry, and of Gottlieb himself, privately indicated they preferred him to another frequently mentioned contender, Jim O'Neill, an associate of Silicon Valley billionaire and Trump adviser Peter Thiel. In a 2014 speech, O'Neill called for allowing drugs to be marketed after they had been proven safe, but before they had been shown to be effective.

O'Neill's views and Trump's recent comments that the FDA's approval process is slow and burdensome despite data showing that reviews have accelerated caused alarm in some quarters that the agency faced the kind of tectonic changes now affecting the Environmental Protection Agency.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/03/10/trump-selects-scott-gottlieb-a-physician-with-deep-drug-industry-ties-to-run-the-fda/

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Hat tip, Joe.My.God:

Big Pharma Insider Scott Gottlieb Set To Head FDA
http://www.joemygod.com/2017/03/10/big-pharma-insider-scott-gottlieb-set-head-fda/

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Trump to select Scott Gottlieb, a physician with deep drug-industry ties, to run the FDA

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carolyn johnson: [link:https://twitter.com/Carolynyjohnson@Carolynyjohnson]

reporter covering the business of health @WashingtonPost, former @BostonGlobe, prefer to explore the world by bicycle, carolyn.johnson@washpost.com