LA Times Op-Ed Backs Woodcock for FDA Head

An LA Times op-ed is endorsing CDER director and current FDA acting commissioner Janet Woodcock as the agency’s next leader. The piece was written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Phillip A. Sharp, Friends of Cancer Research founder Ellen V. Sigal, and Sherry Lansing Foundation founder Sherry Lansing.

“With Covid-19 having claimed more than 450,000 American lives, a number strikingly similar to the lives lost to cancer each year, the person nominated to lead the FDA will face one of the most perilous and serious public health crises America has ever seen,” the authors write. “The new commissioner will have to take on the immense challenge of repairing what four years of disregard for science have done — while also making sure that new advancements in treating cancer and other maladies are not jeopardized as we battle the pandemic.

“As individuals who have spent our lives working to advance science and advocate for cancer research,” the authors continue, “we and many of our colleagues in the oncology community have seen firsthand the leadership shown by Janet Woodcock, the current acting commissioner of the agency, in making breakthroughs a reality for patients... In order to restore trust in the FDA, and restore morale within, a permanent leader with expansive experience, medical expertise and the confidence of agency staff and the American public needs to be nominated in short-order. Woodcock’s qualifications at this vital moment are unimpeachable. She has always been straightforward in her belief in science, innovation and the important role FDA plays in the lives of patients.”

The Woodcock endorsement is a stark contrast from a recommendation against her nomination last month conveyed by 29 advocacy groups, led by Public Citizen and Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. In a 1/27 letter to incoming HHS officials, the groups said that in her role as CDER director for more than 25 years, “Woodcock presided over one of the worst regulatory agency failures in U.S. history. Since 1999, more than 500,000 Americans have lost their lives to opioid-related overdoses, and millions of Americans have developed opioid use disorder from use of prescription opioids.” The letter charges that Woodcock and the drug group she supervised consistently put the interests of opioid manufacturers ahead of public health, often overruling its own scientific advisors and ignoring the pleas of public health groups, state attorneys general, and victims of the opioid crisis.