The FDA appoints Peter Lurie, a major critic, to its Office of Policy. Peter Lurie, a doctor and researcher who has harshly criticized the Food and Drug Administration as one of the leaders of the consumer watchdog Public Citizen, has been appointed to a position at the FDA as a policy advisor.
His appointment is the latest sign of change at the regulator under its new chief, Margaret Hamburg, who has said she is trying to move the FDA more toward being an arbiter of public health, not just an agency that makes yea or nay decisions about specific products.
Lurie has been harshly critical of multiple drugs and devices, most recently of the Menaflex knee device. The FDA's own report said top officials overruled agency scientists, potentially because of Congressional pressure. In his new role, he will help develop strategies to make sure medical products are available to meet public health needs.
The appointment was first reported by Peter Pitts, a former FDA official, on a blog run by the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, a think tank he founded. Pitts is also a public relations executive at Porter Novelli. An FDA spokeswoman confirmed the appointment, but e-mailed requests for additional comment to the FDA's press office and to Lurie himself were not answered.
Sidney Wolfe, another Public Citizen executive who was long seen as an outsider, is now serving on some advisory panels that consider whether or not the FDA should approve new products.
Lurie's appointment is one of a series of prominent additions to the FDA's staff. At the same time, the agency is appointing others, including Jonathan Taylor, a lawyer who has worked at the biotechnology industry's trade group and at Abbott Laboratories ( ABT - news - people ) and Alta Charo, a noted bioethicist.
Lurie has until now been deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, which raised early warnings about drugs such as Merck's ( MRK - news - people ) Vioxx, Pfizer's ( PFE - news - people ) Bextra, and GlaxoSmithKline's ( GSK - news - people ) Avandia.
"We feel that a large fraction of new drugs offer few benefits over existing drugs," Lurie told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year. "We're not against all medications. When we warn against a particular drug, we almost always recommend a different drug instead."
But some say Public Citizen is too critical of new medicines. Pitts complained in his blog post that "Public Citizen's well-known position on 'medical product availability' is that most products are 'too dangerous.'"
Lurie's appointment certainly does show how much the FDA is changing.
