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# Personal Tragedy Drives Pazdur: Profile
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/personal-tragedy-drives-pazdur-profile/
- Published: 2016-01-04T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T02:24:36.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5134290

> A *New York Times* [profile](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/us/politics/fda-regulator-widowed-by-cancer-helps-speed-drug-approval.html?smid=tw-share&%5Fr=0&ref=fdaweb.com) says that the approach taken by long-time FDA oncology chief **Richard Pazdur** to approving new cancer drugs has changed with his wife’s ovarian cancer diagnosis and 11/2015 death. The profile says that some cancer specialists say that **Mary Pazdur**’s three-year ordeal was a factor in Pazdur’s “willingness to swiftly approve risky new treatments and passion to fight the disease that patient advocates through he lacked.” However, it says, “others worry that the emotions of a loving husband have short-circuited vital safeguards.”  
>  
> For his part, Pazdur told the *Times* that “I have a much greater sense of urgency these days. I have been on a jihad to streamline the review process and get things out the door faster. I have evolved from regulator to regulator-advocate.”  
>  
> However, he said that other factors are driving him in addition to his wife’s illness. He noted that in 2012 Congress passed legislation giving FDA more money and a new pathway to work more closely with drug makers when a medicine may save lives. And another important change in the last three years, he said, was a surge in advances in genetic research that made some medicines more effective and easier to test. “The drugs simply got better,” he told the newspaper.  
>  
> Some critics are quoted in the article as saying that they respect Pazdur very much but fear that the agency is losing sight of the importance of ensuring that drugs save lives. And others say they see a financial windfall for drug makers that are getting their products to market faster.  
>  
> “FDA is more beholden to industry now than at any time since I became a close observer of the agency in 1971,” said Public Citizen Health Research Group founder **Sidney Wolfe**. “Too many decisions FDA now makes are driven by industry concerns, and as a result people are getting hurt.”