Skip to content

Jeff Sutherland

Twice the Energy with Half the Stress

Boston Globe: Drug industry costs doctor top FDA post



Medication error is the fourth leading cause of death in this country so our government should be concerned about medical safety, right? Wrong!

Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe has written a penetrating article on Memorial Day about Dr. Alastair J.J. Wood, who had already been selected by the White House to take over the FDA, an organization that has been leaderless for quite some time. Robert Goldberg, a pharma promoter, wrote in the conservative National Review online edition that if Wood became commissioner, the FDA would be so tough on drug manufacturers that the government’s message to patients would be “Drop dead.” Wood not only was contaminated by his concern for medical safety, he actually sat on an FDA panel reviewing Pfizer’s Zyrtec, Schering-Plough’s Claritin, and Aventis’s Allegra and recommended that they become over the counter drugs. This could have cost the pharmas tens of millions of lost profits!

So we have a rather schizophrenic response from those who are concerned that patient safety would restrict drugs from early release costing them billions in future profits and even worse, free prescription drugs for over the counter purchase at reduced price giving a haircut to current profits. Is Wood for more drugs or less drugs? It doesn’t matter, he’s bad for business.

The power of the Internet is that the White House actually reads this stuff and they dumped Wood immediately.