And then there were two

A cardiologist and a city health official lead the pack of potential FDA commissioners

Written byBob Grant

| 2 min read

The blogosphere has been alight this week with the news that only two candidates remain in the running to become President Barack Obama's new FDA commissioner: Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore's city health commissioner and linkurl:Robert Califf,;http://www.dukemedicine.org/Leadership/Administration/CaliffRobert%20 Duke University's vice chancellor for clinical research.

Califf

linkurl:Peter Pitts,;http://www.cmpi.org/about-us/founders/peter-pitts/ president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI) and former FDAstaffer, confirmed those rumors, both on linkurl:DrugWonks.com;http://www.drugwonks.com/blog_post/show/6571 -- CMPI's blog -- and when I called him yesterday. Pitts, who has advised the Obama transition team, said that Sharfstein and Califf were the only two names receiving serious consideration.The gravity of Obama's choice seems to increase day by day. Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office linkurl:placed;http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-271 the FDA on a list of "high-risk" areas of the federal government, to attract the attentions of legislators. "FDA needs to, among other things, improve the data it uses to manage the foreign drug inspection program, conduct more inspections of foreign establishments, systematically prioritize and track promotional materials for review, and adopt management tools to ensure that drug sponsors comply with regulations on the presentation of clinical trial results," the GAO report reads.

Sharfstein

Sharfstein, recently deflected speculation that he would be taking up the helm at FDA, linkurl:telling;http://invivoblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/sharfstein-speaks-is-he-headed-to.html a radio reporter, "I'm fully expecting to be health commissioner of Baltimore."Califf, a cardiologist who is also director of Duke's Translational Medicine Institute, seems to be a logical fit for the FDA. He has served on the FDA's Cardio-Renal Advisory Committee and on committees and panels at the Institute of Medicine.Though some blogs are reporting that Obama has already offered the FDA commissionership to one of these two guys, and that an announcement is imminent, we may have to wait a bit longer. "I would like to think a commissioner would be named before Valentine's Day," Pitts told __The Scientist__.
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:The between team;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55329/
[12th January 2009]*linkurl:Morale Mire;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/55234/
[December 2008]

Meet the Author

Bob Grant

From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.

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