Future FDA Commissioner Frank Torti?
Posted by Scott Hensley
June 11, 2008, 9:27 am
The man named two months ago as the FDA’s first scientist in chief may be in line to become the next commissioner.
Frank Torti: Next Commish?
Frank Torti, a cancer researcher from Wake Forest University, has the chops and the inside track, writes Kate Rawson in the RPM Report.
therpmreport.com
Conventional wisdom inside the Beltway is that current FDA chief Andrew von Eschenbach isn’t long for the job. Rawson says the chatter is that he’ll be asked to leave the agency the day after the election, regardless of who becomes president.
Torti would be the logical choice to serve as interim head of the agency after that. And becoming FDA caretaker is a well-trod stepping stone to permanent power–von Eschenbach first got the job as a temp.
Torti may have some stiff competition, though. The Boston Globe, among others, reported last year that Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Steve Nissen would love to make his unofficial job as drug watchdog the real deal.
What’s Torti have to say? He told the Pink Sheet, a sister publication of the RPM Report, “I’m not in the habit of taking a job no one’s told me about yet.”
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