The king is dead, long live the king: Sharpless vows to continue Gottlieb era at FDA

“Scott Gottlieb’s relatively short two-year tenure as the FDA’s head has ended, and we have a new man at the helm: Ned Sharpless. However, he used his first official talk to ensure we all know he’s not looking to tear up Gottlieb’s legacy.

Gottlieb, in fact, denied to reporters at the start of the year that he was leaving, but a few short months later he announced he was doing exactly that (citing commuting times), and then preceded to have the world’s longest goodbye tour. Fitting, I suppose, for a rock’n’roll FDA commissioner.

Gottlieb was praised by many in the bio Twitter sphere, as well as by President Donald Trump, the man who appointed him as FDA commissioner. Some areas, though, namely the opioid crisis and the surge in an anti-vaxxer movement, which has also seen a related spike in measles cases in the U.S., are still areas the FDA must get a grip on.”