Pharmaceutical executives are calling on President-elect Donald Trump to appoint someone with a medical background to serve as chief of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and ensure the agency continues evaluating the effectiveness of new therapies, reports Bloomberg.
Mr. Trump is considering Jim O'Neill, a Silicon Valley investor, and Balaji Srinivasan, a former biotechnology industry executive, to head the FDA. Both candidates are associates of venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Mr. Trump's science and technology adviser, and neither has a medical background. Mr. O'Neill is a proponent of granting FDA approval to drugs that are proven safe, even if their effectiveness has not yet been proven, according to the report.
"We'd want someone in that position who is knowledgeable about drug development or patient care," Roger Perlmutter, MD, PhD, head of research and development at Merck & Co., said Jan. 9 in an interview with Bloomberg at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. Dr. Perlmutter said an ideal candidate is a physician scientist with experience in clinical care and medical research. "We wouldn't want somebody in there who didn't have that level of understanding, but they could come from a lot of different environments," such as public health, he said.
Mr. Trump's transition team did not respond to Bloomberg's requests for a comment on the matter.