Right on dead­line, Trump taps Stephen Hahn as new FDA com­mish. Now what?

Stephen Hahn’s nom­i­na­tion as the new com­mis­sion­er of the FDA was de­liv­ered right on sched­ule Fri­day, with the clock tick­ing down on the No­vem­ber 1 dead­line Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump faced in find­ing a per­ma­nent re­place­ment for Scott Got­tlieb. The pend­ing news had be­come the worst kept se­cret in Wash­ing­ton. But the full mean­ing of the move is still un­de­ter­mined.

The Chief Med­ical Ex­ec­u­tive at MD An­der­son had a rep for steer­ing straight in­to con­fronta­tion, when the fu­ture of the in­sti­tu­tion was at stake. More prob­lem­at­ic, per­haps, will be his role in dis­miss­ing Chi­nese re­searchers at a time the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has been bear­ing down on the Asian gi­ant. Just how Hahn will man­age drug de­vel­op­ment, which is my pri­ma­ry are­na of in­ter­est, is go­ing to take some time to fig­ure out.

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