Jeremy Kahn, FDA press officer, told The BMJ that the FDA has "More enhanced ethics restrictions than most other federal agencies. The FDA takes seriously its obligation to help ensure that decisions made and actions taken, by the agency and its employees, are not, nor appear to be, tainted by any question of conflict of interest. The agency provides robust information and resources to employees regarding the steps that must be taken to fulfil these ethics obligations."
The BMJ has found that the FDA keeps no records on where employees go after they leave government service.
Holman says, "The revolving door is particularly abusive in agencies that have a huge flood of money going in. That's a big problem with the FDA, especially with the pandemic and Operation Warp Speed"-referring to the public health-military-industrial partnership tasked with expediting a coronavirus vaccine to market.
The revolving door The perils of a revolving door between the FDA and industry were vividly captured in the case of Curtis Wright and Purdue Pharma, a story now chronicled in books and on television.
A separate investigation by Science magazine in 2018 similarly reported that "11 of 16 FDA medical examiners who worked on 28 drug approvals and then left the agency for new jobs are now employed by or consult for the companies they recently regulated. This can create at least the appearance of conflicts of interest."
The BMJ asked Goswami, Fink, Moderna, and the FDA whether either of the former regulators sought guidance from the FDA's Office of Ethics and Integrity before moving to Moderna, as well as whether they recused themselves from any FDA matters related to their employment search.
The FDA instructed The BMJ to file a Freedom of Information Act request for this information, which The BMJhas done, and Moderna's vice president of communications and media, Chris Ridley, replied, "We have no comment on your inquiry."
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