Posted by Michael Wonder on 08 Jan 2019
All seven of the FDA’s recent commissioners agree it should be independent — but not on how to accomplish it
7 January 2019 - Nearly every person who’s run the FDA in recent history agrees the agency should break free from its political supervisors — a rare consensus from commissioners who served under Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
In two papers published Monday, all seven of the FDA’s most recent commissioners wrote that the current setup — in which the agency is a mere subdivision of the Department of Health and Human Services — interferes with the ability of its scientists to protect the health of the public.
They described a situation in which a tangled web of responsibilities, along with political overseers who aren’t necessarily motivated by science, all make it harder for the FDA to keep people safe.
