Home » Entities » Robert Goldberg
Profile: Robert Goldberg
Robert Goldberg was a participant or observer in the following events:
February 2002: White House Decides Not to Nominate Doctor as FDA Commissioner Because of Industry Opposition
The Bush administration decides to drop its plan to nominate Dr. Alastair J. J. Wood as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. An article recently posted on the conservative National Review Online's website warned that Wood is not friendly to industry interests. "The people I know in clinical pharmacology, in the research trenches, went berserk when they heard about Wood," wrote Robert Goldberg, a senior fellow at New York's Manhattan Institute, a free-market think tank. Goldberg said the doctor is overly obsessed with drug safety and asserts, falsely, that Wood is "a buddy of Senator Ted Kennedy." The attack on Wood was continued in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal six days later in a piece titled "It's Not Ted's FDA." Shortly after the publication of these articles, the White House calls Wood to inform him that the administration is no longer considering his nomination for commissioner, a post that has been vacant for more than a year. Republican Senator Bill Frist—the person who had recommended Wood's nomination—tells the Boston Globe that the White House was concerned that Wood "put too much emphasis on the safety." Wood's track record was evidence that he might take an aggressive approach to regulating drugs. He previously called for an independent board to investigate potentially deadly drugs. The current policy is to allow the drug companies to do their own studies on adverse drug reactions and then provide these results to the FDA. Wood has also said that he believes the current FDA regulatory process has an inherent conflict of interest because the same department that approves drugs is also in charge of reviewing the safety of those drugs post-approval, a criticism that is shared by at least one FDA insider (see November 18, 2004). Furthermore, in May 2001, Wood supported making three allergy prescription drugs—Pfizer's Zyrtec, Schering-Plough's Claritin, and Aventis's Allegra—available over-the-counter (OTC). The companies were opposed to the idea because OTC drugs are often sold at lower prices and are not typically covered by insurance. During a panel discussion on the issue, Wood had noted, "What we have today is an unseemly parade of people trying to protect their own financial interests." [Boston Globe, 5/27/2002]
Entity Tags: Robert Goldberg, Bush administration (43), Alastair J. J. Wood
Timeline Tags: US Health Care