FDA Makes Two Appointments

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has appointed critic Peter Lurie to its policy team and John M. Taylor III as counselor to the commissioner.

Lurie, M.D., will serve in the agency’s Office of Policy,where he will help develop strategies to facilitate medical productavailability to meet critical public health needs, reporting to the assistant commissioner for policy, according to the agency. Lurie most recently served as deputy director of health research group Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. Additionally, he is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School ofPublic Health in Baltimore, Md., and the George Washington University School of Public Health and Life Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Taylor’s post is a new one at the FDA, where he will oversee the agency’s crisis functions, as well as advise on a range of policy and regulatory matters, the FDA said. Taylor, who is an attorney, served previously with the FDA as a staff lawyer, an adviser to previous commissioners and as associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. He most recently has served as executive vice president of health at the Biotechnology Industry Organization in Washington, D.C., after serving as a divisional vice president for federal governmental affairs at Abbott Laboratories, based in Abbott Park, Ill.

The moves come as FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg seeks to make changes at the agency after criticism about the agency’s medical device approval process.