Revolving Doors to Business Lucrative for FDA Officials

The US Food and Drug Administration says that it takes conflicts of interest seriously. But financial entanglements with the drug industry are common among its leaders. Peter Doshi reports At his public confirmation hearing in late 2021, Robert Califf, President Biden’s nominee to lead the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), faced pointed questions about his financial relationships with industry. Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, asked, “At a time when the American people are outraged by the high cost of prescription drugs, deeply disturbed about what happened with Purdue and Oxycontin, what kind of comfort can you give to the American people when you have been so closely tied to the pharmaceutical industry yourself?” He added, “How can the American people feel comfortable you’re going to stand up to this powerful special interest?” Califf responded: “Senator Sanders, I have a history of doing that. But I’d also point out that this administration has the most stringent ethics pledge in the history of administrations.” Califf did not earn Sanders’s vote, but he got the job. With it, the incoming FDA commissioner committed to sell his pharmaceutical stocks and sever his financial relationships with biotech companies such as Alphabet owned Verily Life Sciences, which paid Califf $2.7m as a senior adviser, according to his federal disclosure (see supplementary files on bmj.com). The divestitures were not the product of an ethics pledge, nor were they optional. Criminal conflict of interest rules prohibit government employees from “participating personally and substantially in official matters where they have a financial interest.”1 Other regulations prohibit FDA employees from holding financial interests in any FDA “significantly regulated organisation” such as drug and medical device companies.2 Failure to comply can be costly. In 2007, a former FDA commissioner—Lester Crawford—was sentenced to three years of supervised probation … Read Full Article »