Two former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) employees overseeing COVID-19 vaccines went to work for Moderna, according to an investigation from the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
After working for the FDA as its lead medical officer in the Office of Vaccines Research and taking part in advisory meetings for COVID-19 vaccines, Dr. Doran Fink headed the “translational medicine and early clinical development programme in infectious diseases” for Moderna, the BMJ wrote.
Dr. Jaya Goswami also worked for the FDA before shifting to Moderna. During her time with the FDA, Goswami was “responsible for evaluating whether the clinical data for Moderna’s covid vaccine met regulatory standards for approval.”
The employees’ transitions have raised concerns of a “revolving door” between the government and private sectors.
Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist Public Citizen, told the BMJ that 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.”
A 2018 article in Science described the FDA’s “revolving doors,” as the agency’s employees “often reap later rewards—jobs or consulting work—from the makers of the drugs they previously regulated.”
The outlet described that 11 out of the 16 former FDA employees it examined went on to work for the companies they regulated. For example, “Jeffrey Siegel, who was an FDA staff member specializing in reviews for arthritis drugs, oversaw the 2010 approval of Genentech’s arthritis drug tocilizumab (Actemra),” Science wrote. “Months later, he left the agency to join the company and its parent, Roche, as director of the division that includes Actemra and related offerings.”
A 2019 poll from Gallup found that Americans view the pharmaceutical industry as the “most poorly regarded.” Fifty-eight percent of Americans hold a negative view of the industry, while only 27% of Americans hold a favorable view of the pharmaceutical industry.
