Lib­er­tar­i­an ideas on FDA dereg­u­la­tion threat­en biotech; It's time for some re­al pow­er to re­form drug prices, rea­son­ably

Do you sin­cere­ly want to dereg­u­late drug de­vel­op­ment?

Sil­i­con Val­ley’s Bal­a­ji Srini­vasan had quite a habit of tack­ling the FDA on Twit­ter, crit­i­ciz­ing the agency for its slow and back­ward ways. But all that came back to haunt him af­ter re­porters picked up on the news that he and fel­low ‘seast­ead­er’ Jim O’Neill had been in to chat with Don­ald Trump about top jobs at the FDA. Sud­den­ly, that Twit­ter chan­nel van­ished in­to thin air, as we re­port­ed first. But his Tweets were saved, and live on, even as we hear that Srini­vasan may not be in line for that job any more. Trump’s fi­nal pick to run the FDA will have a huge in­flu­ence on how the agency plans to speed drug de­vel­op­ment. And we have a right and a need to suss things out for our­selves. So far, this episode ranks as an­oth­er rea­son to sus­pect that the FDA may soon be head­ed for a wrong turn, es­pe­cial­ly if the new fo­cus is on a sub­stan­tial dereg­u­la­tion of drug de­vel­op­ment born out of a dis­gust for the bu­reau­cra­cy.

Endpoints Premium

This article is for premium subscribers only

Upgrade to a premium subscription plan for unlimited access, and join our community of key biopharma players.