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# Califf May Return as FDA Commissioner: Report
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/califf-may-return-as-fda-commissioner-report/
- Published: 2021-10-14T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T17:19:00.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5150370

Three sources have told the *Washington Post* that the White House is close to naming former FDA commissioner **Robert Califf** to the position again. The *Post* [says](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/14/fda-commissioner-califf/?ref=fdaweb.com) that under federal law Biden faces a mid-November deadline to either nominate acting commissioner **Janet Woodcock** or name someone else to the position.

Califf, a cardiology professor at Duke University School of Medicine, was commissioner for less than a year at the end of the Obama administration. He had been confirmed on an 89-4 vote in 2/2016, the report says. Some senators had criticized his appointment because of his ties to drug companies that helped fund his research at Duke.

The newspaper says some agency officials were hoping that Woodcock would be given the position permanently, saying she provided a steady hand at a tumultuous time for FDA. It appeared there was too much opposition to her in the Senate, however.

The *Post* says the administration had hoped to find a candidate who could help Biden keep his pledge for a diverse administration and vetted several women and people of color, but finally decided to go with a government veteran who knows and understands the agency.

Responding to the report, Public Citizen Health Research Group director **Michael Carome** voiced opposition to Califf. “The country desperately needs an FDA leader who will reverse the decades-long trend in which the agency’s relationship with the pharmaceutical and medical device industries has grown dangerously cozier, resulting in regulatory capture of the agency by industry,” Carome said in a [statement](https://www.citizen.org/news/biden-floats-recycled-fda-commissioner-pick-who-is-too-closely-aligned-with-big-pharma/?ref=fdaweb.com). “Califf would not be that leader.”

Carone said Califf has a long history of extensive financial ties to Big Pharma, most significantly through pharmaceutical industry funding to the Duke Clinical Research Institute, which he founded in 1996\. He also said that Califf received personal payments from Amgen, AstraZeneca, Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Sanofi-Aventis both before and after his previous term as commissioner.