Mark B. McClellan, the baby-faced, dual-degreed head of the Food and Drug Administration, is rarely the prince when he plays dress-up with his twin 4 1/2-year-old daughters. McClellan, the 40-year-old former Stanford economist and internist, is generally the ogre. Or the dinosaur.
He takes his servile status in stride. "Princes are not an integral part of these stories," says McClellan, who was weaned on Texas politics. "There are weddings, but they [rarely] involve a prince."
While his playroom influence may be minor, his impact on the FDA, since arriving there in November and taking charge of its $1.6 billion budget, has been anything but. His new, let's-play-ball-with-pharma strategy (just one of the changes the agency is orchestrating) has caught the media's attention. "The FDA has clearly come a long way in its transformation from quiet consumer protection agency to lightning rod for controversy," said the Financial Times in July. ".... ...
