A couple weeks back, Paul Krugman asked what other federal agencies, beyond FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, were being run by Bush cronies who weren't qualified for the job.
Time Magazine has some of the answers, and they aren't pretty. One of the agencies to be cronified is the FDA. But Scott Gottlieb, the crony there, isn't an unqualified, ignorant rube like Brownie. The FDA crony knows a lot about drugs and food, especially about big companies like Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Roche and Proctor & Gamble.
His official FDA biography notes that Gottlieb, 33, who got his medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, did a previous stint providing policy advice at the agency, as well as at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. What the bio omits is that his most recent job was as editor of a popular Wall Street newsletter, the Forbes/Gottlieb Medical Technology Investor, in which he offered such tips as "Three Biotech Stocks to Buy Now." In declaring Gottlieb a "noted authority" who had written more than 300 policy and medical articles, the biography neglects the fact that many of those articles criticized the fda for being too slow to approve new drugs and too quick to issue warning letters when it suspects ones already on the market might be unsafe.
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Would he ever be involved in determining whether an individual drug should be on the market? "Of course not," Gottlieb told Time. "Not only wouldn't I be involved in that ... But I would not be in a situation where I would be adjudicating the scientific or medical expertise of the (FDA) on a review matter. That's not my role. It's not my expertise. We defer to the career staff to make scientific and medical decisions." Behind the scenes, however, Gottlieb has shown an interest in precisely those kinds of deliberations.One instance took place on Sept. 15, when the FDA decided to stop the trial of a drug for multiple sclerosis during which three people had developed an unusual disorder in which their bodies eliminated their blood platelets and one died of intracerebral bleeding as a result. In an e-mail obtained by Time, Gottlieb speculated that the complication might have been the result of the disease and not the drug. "Just seems like an overreaction to place a clinical hold" on the trial, he wrote. An FDA scientist rejected his analysis and replied that the complication "seems very clearly a drug-related event."
Do you think Bush calles Gottlieb "Gotti"? It would be fitting. Read the whole piece to learn more about the similarities between the Bush administration hiring practices and those of, say, the Soprano family.