FDA personnel leaving for industry jobs receive behind-the-scenes lobbying advice

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is telling workers leaving for industry jobs that they can still influence the agency despite restrictions on post-employment lobbying, a study by The BMJ.

Internal emails, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, show how two FDA officials working on the approval of COVID-19 vaccines were proactively informed by FDA ethics staff about their ability to indirectly agency to lobby when they left for a job at Moderna.

The data shows that since 2000, every FDA commissioner, the agency’s highest position, has gone to work for the industry.

“So people will leave government service and can immediately start exerting influence and lobbying,” explains Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the organization Public Citizen. “They can even run a lobbying campaign, as long as they don’t actually pick up the phone and contact their former officials – and that is exactly the advice given here.”

Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Center for Health Research and a decades-long regulatory policy analyst, finds the FDA’s proactive guidance on behind-the-scenes work particularly troubling. The advice given behind the scenes is exactly “what makes the FDA’s scientists and staff valuable,” she argues.

Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, DC, and a former deputy commissioner at the FDA, suspects that FDA ethics officials were simply performing their proper functions, but he expressed concern about the dangers of allowing overdue measures. the scenes work.

“It seems contrary to the public interest that an ex-official would support behind-the-scenes activities, especially for a ‘specific issue’ they had been working on,” he said. “In practice, this policy will likely play out in a way that furthers the interests of big pharmaceutical companies, since that is what many officials are going after the FDA.”

The BMJ asked the FDA whether it was concerned that proactively informing employees of their ability to work behind the scenes could be interpreted as indirectly encouraging former FDA staff to lobby the agency.

An agency spokesperson responded: “No. Working behind the scenes does not necessarily equate to direct or indirect lobbying activities. Lobbying activities are covered by the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Former employees must adhere to these requirements just like any other individual or organization .” .”

Last month, US lawmakers introduced bills to change the law governing restrictions on departing workers. They want to ban former health care workers from serving on the boards of manufacturers of drugs, biological products or devices after public service. So far, none of the bills have been passed.