Frank Young, who had a long career as a doctor, scientist, and government administrator, died of lymphoma on November 24 at age 88 in a hospital in Wilmington, NC, The Washington Post reports.
In the mid-1970s at Rockefeller University, Young helped discover a bacterial restriction enzyme that allowed researchers to cut and paste DNA—the basis of genetic cloning. A decade later, he moved to Washington, DC, to serve as commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under President Ronald Reagan, a role Young called “the most important post in American medicine today,” according to the Post.
It was a pivotal time in public health. The HIV-AIDS crisis was just beginning, and some in the patient community felt that Young was not taking sufficient steps to expedite the delivery of a treatment to patients. “Frank Young was going to be the good guy who would take the heat for ...
