FDA Appointments and Resignations

It has been a week of turnover at the US Food and Drug Administration (Rockville, MD). Here is a chronology:

Sept. 22. Acting Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Deputy Director Douglas Throckmorton appointed to the post permanently.

Sept. 23. FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford resigns. A copy of the resignation is distributed without comment to the media at 4:35 P.M. (The New York Times observes that the timing, late Friday afternoon with a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on the Texas coast, seems intended to reduce reaction.)

Sept. 23. President George Bush names National Cancer Institute Director Andrew C. von Eschenbach, MD, acting FDA commissioner.

Sept. 26. FDA reports that Jonathan Wilkin, director of the Division of Dermatology and Dental Products, is retiring and that deputy director Stanka Kukich would be named acting director.

Sept 26.  Hsien-Ming James Hung named director of the Division of Biometrics I, in CDER’s Office of Pharmacoepidemiology and Statistical Science.

–Douglas McCormick