Opin­ion: Biden needs to step up and nom­i­nate an FDA com­mis­sion­er

Enough with the wait­ing. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden needs to em­brace the FDA dur­ing this pan­dem­ic and kick­start the Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion process for the next per­ma­nent com­mis­sion­er.

And this needs to hap­pen quick­ly. There are plen­ty of qual­i­fied can­di­dates for the role out­side of act­ing com­mis­sion­er Janet Wood­cock and Josh Sharf­stein. Biden needs to move fast not be­cause the bio­phar­ma world strug­gles with even the per­cep­tion of FDA un­cer­tain­ty (it does), but be­cause thou­sands of FDA em­ploy­ees have been deal­ing with four years of po­lit­i­cal smears while putting in over­time to re­view thou­sands of Covid-19 drug and vac­cine tri­als, and to au­tho­rize three safe vac­cines in record time.

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