The Trump administration’s mass firings at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have removed employees critical to reviewing new medicines, setting back years of effort to bring promising treatments to patients more quickly, former and current FDA sources told Reuters.
The FDA is slated to lose 3,500 employees under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s massive restructuring of U.S. health agencies that is part of President Donald Trump’s wider campaign to dramatically slash the federal workforce.
Kennedy said last week that the main goal of the cuts was to centralize support functions such as technology, procurement, human resources and communications. Yet the personnel changes have included the ouster of high-ranking scientists at most major FDA divisions overseeing drugs and vaccines, medical devices, food, veterinary medicine and tobacco products.
“These deep cuts and the loss of experienced leadership at virtually all the major centers that regulate the safety of food, drugs, devices is quite high risk,” said Dr. Jesse Goodman, former chief scientist at the FDA and director of Georgetown University’s Center on Medical Product Access, Safety and Stewardship.
