Sen­ate com­mit­tee backs Stephen Hahn as the next FDA com­mis­sion­er

A Sen­ate com­mit­tee hand­i­ly vot­ed in fa­vor of con­firm­ing MD An­der­son’s Stephen Hahn as the next of­fi­cial FDA com­mis­sion­er, suc­ceed­ing the inim­itable Scott Got­tlieb. And he was whisked through the 18-5 vote on the back of some tardy praise from a host of health­care groups — in­clud­ing quite a few that ini­tial­ly sup­port­ed act­ing com­mis­sion­er Ned Sharp­less for the job.

In the end, the out­come of the vote Tues­day morn­ing wasn’t re­al­ly in ques­tion, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the luke­warm op­po­si­tion he faced dur­ing his job in­ter­view dur­ing the Sen­ate hear­ing on the nom­i­na­tion.

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