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FDA Commissioner Crawford resigns
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WASHINGTON — Lester Crawford resigned his position as the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner last week, according to news reports. He had been acting commissioner of the FDA for most of President George W. Bush’s administration and was confirmed by the Senate as the agency’s permanent commissioner during the summer.
As a replacement, President Bush appointed the director of the National Cancer Institute, Andrew von Eschenbach, MD, as acting commissioner of the FDA. Dr. Eschenbach told the Associated Press he intends to remain chief of the NCI while running the FDA.
Mr. Crawford oversaw the FDA during a period when several controversies arose – among them the labeling of antidepressants regarding risk of suicide in young patients, the withdrawal of Merck & Co.’s COX-2 inhibitor from the market and the agency’s repeated postponement of a decision regarding the “morning-after” birth control pill.
Mr. Crawford won the Senate’s approval only after promising an agency decision on the morning-after pill by Sept. 1. Last month, the agency announced another delay in approving the pill in over-the-counter form, prompting the resignation of the FDA’s top woman’s health official.
Dr. Eschenbach told the AP that accelerating the timeline to get new drugs to market while ensuring their safety is a “perpetual challenge” for the FDA, one he hopes to address.
Dr. Eschenbach is not without controversy himself, news reports reported. He has said he hopes by 2015 that cancer will be an easily survivable chronic disease that people live with rather than die from. The scientific research community has cautioned that science is not yet close to that goal, according to news reports.