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# No FDA Free Pass for Drug Industry: Columnist
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/no-fda-free-pass-for-drug-industry-columnist/
- Published: 2018-01-02T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T23:09:16.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5140395

Bloomberg News columnist **Max Nisen** says FDA commissioner **Scott Gottlieb** may not always be the friend the drug industry expected to see in the commissioner’s office. Nisen’s [column](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-01-02/trump-fda-chief-scott-gottlieb-isn-t-pharma-s-bff-after-all?ref=fdaweb.com) says that Gottlieb is the only Trump administration official to follow through on the president’s rhetoric about high drug costs.

“With an eye to bringing down prices,” Nisen writes, “Gottlieb has presided over record generic drug approvals and a multi-year high in novel drug approvals, while also working to speed more medical devices to market. His agency has suggested it might be more flexible in approving drugs and will try to get cancer drugs to market more quickly, using data from smaller and faster clinical trials…. This is not exactly what Gottlieb’s critics expected, and it’s probably not fulfilling all of biopharma’s fondest hopes for his tenure either. The industry isn’t monolithic; different sectors have different priorities, and Gottlieb’s impact will vary accordingly.”

Nisen points out that nothing Gottlieb is doing has as much impact as the price curbs employed in other countries. But, he says, the industry “is definitely not getting a free pass in 2018.”