FDA commissioner calls it quits 2 months after confirmation
Controversies have shaken the agency's credibility and morale.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- Embattled Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester M. Crawford resigned unexpectedly Friday, just two months after he survived a tough Senate confirmation.
President Bush appointed Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, director of the National Cancer Institute, to be acting commissioner.
Crawford, 67, leaves an agency whose credibility and morale have been shaken by recent controversies, including the failure to act promptly on concerns about unsafe medications and repeated delays in making an emergency contraceptive available without a prescription.
Both issues made Crawford a lightning rod for criticism from lawmakers, drug safety advocates and women's rights activists during his tenure as interim, then permanent, FDA chief. Yet his abrupt resignation surprised many in and outside the agency.
In a brief farewell message to his staff, Crawford thanked Bush, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and "the extraordinary people of FDA for the honor of having served with them. ... After three and a half years as deputy commissioner, acting commissioner and finally as commissioner, it is time ... to step aside."
A veterinarian by training, Crawford served two stints as acting FDA commissioner and as deputy commissioner from 2002 to 2004.
The former chair of the physiology and pharmacology department at the University of Georgia, he also served as administrator of the Food Safety and Inspection Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1987 to 1991.