For­mer head of FDA’s med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic af­fairs on Covid: ‘FDA has nev­er been test­ed like this’

Anand Shah has served the Amer­i­can pub­lic in a unique way, criss­cross­ing over the last two ad­min­is­tra­tions be­tween serv­ing as an at­tend­ing ra­di­a­tion on­col­o­gist fo­cused on prostate can­cer at NIH, serv­ing as CMO at the Cen­ter for Medicare and Med­ic­aid In­no­va­tion, and most re­cent­ly, lead­ing the FDA’s op­er­a­tions on med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic af­fairs from with­in the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice.

Shah, who stepped down from the FDA in Jan­u­ary, caught up with End­points News in a phone in­ter­view on Tues­day af­ter­noon, of­fer­ing his thoughts on the agency’s lat­est de­ci­sion to pause the J&J vac­ci­na­tions in the US, and re­flect­ing on his time at an agency dur­ing this once-in-a-life­time pan­dem­ic.

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