New GOP block to FDA Commissioner approval

Following the Barr Pharmaceuticals' Plan B (levonorgestrel) emergency contraception row which provoked Democratic US Senators Hillary Clinton (New York) and Patty Murray (Washington) to issue a "hold" on the confirmation of Andrew von Eschenbach, the Acting Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, to the position on a permanent basis (Marketletters passim), it is now the turn of Republican Senators to issue holds for similar drug industry-related issues.

Sen David Vitter (Republican, Louisiana) has demanded a compromise on the issue of the FDA ban on the importation of drugs from Canada (Marketletters passim) and Sen Jim DeMint (Republican, South Carolina), who is calling for the prohibition of Cayman Islands-based Danco Laboratories' Mifeprex (mifepristone), the abortifacient commonly referred to as RU-486.

Commenting on the latest obstructions to Dr von Eschenbach's nomination, Robert Goldberg, vice president of the New York-based think-tank the Center for Medicines in the Public Interest, described the Sen DeMint hold as a "stunt" in reaction to the Plan B reversal by the FDA. Dr Goldberg also described the Sen Vitter position as "intellectually feeble" in the face of recent FDA evidence that Canadian pharmacies have distributed counterfeit drugs. The problem is that, with such precedents set in motion, there seems to be no limit to the "political prostitution," as Dr Goldberg puts it, of the FDA Commisioner nomination process.