STAT+: Pharmalittle: FDA head wants to get rid of advisory panel votes; premature-birth drug is finally withdrawn
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner would like to get rid of voting at the end of advisory committee meetings “as much as possible,” STAT reports. “The most important thing to me about the advisory committees is that the purpose is not to take a vote on the approval of a product,” says FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. The voting is “a habit, it’s not a requirement, and it’s not very useful. I’d like more advisory committees to be about the thinking about the field and the intervention that’s being assessed, not so much the approval decision. That’s an FDA decision, not an advisory committee decision.”
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