Lurie named FDA's acting associate commissioner for policy and planning

Former FDA critic turned Senior Advisor Peter Lurie will become the agency's acting associate commissioner for policy and planning, according to a memo from FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg on Wednesday. Before joining FDA in 2009, Lurie was a staunch critic of the agency's relationship with industry while deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. Lurie called for elimination of PDUFA and advocated instituting a comparative safety or efficacy requirement for new drugs. In a 2007 letter to Congress, Lurie and colleagues said "user fees have created an untenable conflict of interest" for FDA. Lurie was also the principal author of a 2006 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on conflict of interest at FDA advisory committees that has been widely cited by advocates of stricter COI policies (see BioCentury, Oct. 26, 2009). ...