Margaret Hamburg is the person that hired another GSK stooge, Zeller, right? I'd love to see him hauled into court with her.
FDA names new head of tobacco governance group
Something Bill G has brought up several times and might be of note to ecig vendors contemplating PMTAs:
"An AP review in December uncovered that the agency had not ruled on thousands of
tobacco product applications, a majority of which have lingered for more than a year."
As to conflict of interest - there's much there:
"Brad Rodu, a professor of medicine at the University of Louisville and a smokeless-
tobacco advocate, said he is concerned that Zeller’s work with GlaxoSmithKline could create a regulatory bias against manufacturers’ smokeless products.
He urged the FDA to take an open-minded approach to smokeless innovations, “especially when smokers have increasing access to vastly safer alternatives.”
Dr. Gilbert Ross of the American Council on Science and Health, said the FDA should have chosen a candidate with less conflict of interest concerns.
“To clarify,
the newly appointed head of the CTP, one of whose main missions should be to objectively evaluate methods for helping smokers quit most effectively, has been in the business of promoting FDA-approved traditional NRT [nicotine replacement therapy] products, while (not surprisingly) he has been in the forefront of opposing consideration of alternative cessation products such as snus and e-cigarettes,” Ross said.
“While the previous CTP head proved to be no friend of newer, more effective tobacco harm reduction approaches, he at least was not a dogged opponent of the policy.”"