Obama is being urged to move quickly to appoint an FDA commissioner. Already more than a half-dozen names are in circulation: [image-nocss] outside critics such as Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissen; insiders such as Susan Wood, a former director of the FDA's women's health office; and public health advocates such as Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore's health chief, said the report.
Food safety will also be a priority for Obama's FDA. "He thinks this is a fundamental role of government to ensure that people's food is safe, and he has been concerned that we are not in a position to ensure that," Neera Tanden, a senior campaign adviser, told AP.
Under the tobacco proposal, the agency would be able to order changes in tobacco products to make them less toxic and addictive, but could not ban tobacco or nicotine. The bill passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support, but a veto threat from Bush kept it from getting out of Congress.
Aides to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), co-author of the tobacco bill, said there is strong interest in getting the legislation passed soon after the new Congress convenes in January. Obama is a co-sponsor.
And bedeviled by a salmonella outbreak and tainted medicine from China, the FDA is likely to monitor imports and fresh produce more closely under an Obama administration, too. Obama will be working with a Democratic-led Congress, including lawmakers who have written legislation to bolster import inspections.
Only a fraction of imported food is inspected now. Foreign drug manufacturing plants can go years without an FDA visit. Democrats had considered fees on industry to pay for more FDA inspectors, but could not persuade the Bush administration to go along. They expect Obama to be receptive.
Tanden said Obama is open to the idea of requiring a tracing system for fresh produce. That became an issue during this summer's salmonella outbreak, after the FDA spent weeks hunting for tainted tomatoes only to find the culprit might have been hot peppers.
"An Obama administration would swing the pendulum back more to protection of public health," said William Hubbard, a retired FDA official who held top posts. "This bodes well for greater regulation in the food safety area, on imports and on drug safety."
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