Government
During a hearing in front of the Senate’s HELP committee, Susan Monarez addressed her controversial firing and recalled a conversation where Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. allegedly said that “CDC employees were killing children and they don’t care.”
The White House is clamping down on pharma’s ability to buy new molecules from Chinese biotechs; Sanofi, Merck and others abandon the U.K. after the introduction of a sizeable levy; Novo CEO Maziar Mike Doustdar lays off 9,000 while the company presents new data at EASD; Capsida loses a patient in a gene therapy trial; and CDER Director George Tidmarsh walks back comments on FDA adcomms.
Merck, Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca have similarly suspended or outright canceled investments in the U.K. in the past week after a sizeable increase in a mandatory levy in the region.
Like the first batch of appointees to the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, several of the new panelists have documented histories of vaccine and COVID-19 skepticism.
President Donald Trump is considering tariff exemptions for certain “non-patented” pharmaceuticals, though the White House has yet to release specific guidelines.
New draft guidelines suggest the FDA is open to exercising regulatory flexibility for non-opioid drugs being developed for chronic pain.
Former CDC director Susan Monarez and former chief medical officer Debra Houry will appear in front of the Senate HELP Committee on Sept. 17.
This week’s release of the Make America Health Again report revealed continued emphasis on vaccine safety; Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s faceoff with senators last week amounted to political theater; the FDA promises complete response letters in real time and shares details on a new rare disease framework; and Summit disappoints at the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Barcelona.
In a livestreamed meeting Tuesday afternoon, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drew a dark portrait of the state of America’s health while addressing the MAHA Commission’s most recent report, which includes plans to research potential links between vaccines and rising rates of chronic disease.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated a series of anti-vaccine talking points during his appearance in front of the Senate finance committee on Thursday, as Democratic and Republican senators alike hammered the Health Secretary on recent COVID-19 vaccine restrictions and his views on Operation Warp Speed.
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