The Senate voted 89 to 4 on Wednesday to confirm Dr. Robert M. Califf as the next commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Califf, who joined FDA a year ago as deputy commissioner, is a cardiologist and was a medical researcher at Duke University for more than 30 years years.
President Obama nominated Califf to head FDA in September. But in the months following, his nomination faced opposition from some Senators, including Senators Edward Markey (D-MA) and Joe Manchin (D-WVA), because of his ties to the pharmaceutical industry and frustration over what they said was FDA’s lax approach to opioid painkillers.
In 2006, Califf founded the Duke University Clinical Research Institute, which worked with pharmaceutical groups. Such ties raised concern that he was too close to the industry he was being called on to regulate. Many medical experts countered that the industry was a principal financier of research in the United States and that working with companies did not present an inherent conflict.
FDA has been approving, at a record pace, an array of new drugs for cancer treatment and other diseases as well as pursuing its long-standing efforts to revamp the nation’s food safety system.
Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the prior FDA Commissioner, left the job early last year. The FDA’s chief scientist, Dr. Stephen Ostroff, has been serving as acting head of the agency.
