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President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has selected Dr David Kessler to help lead Operation Warp Speed, the program to accelerate the development of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, according to transition officials.
Dr Kessler, a pediatrician and lawyer who headed the Food and Drug Administration during the presidencies of George Bush and Bill Clinton, has been a key adviser to Mr Biden on Covid-19 policy and is co-chair of the Covid transition team – 19 working group.
He will replace Dr Moncef Slaoui, researcher and former head of a pharmaceutical company, who will become a consultant for Operation Warp Speed. Dr Kessler will share key responsibilities for the initiative with Gen. Gustav F. Perna, who will continue as chief operating officer, according to a Biden transition spokesperson. Dr. Kessler’s responsibilities will cover the manufacture, distribution, and safety and efficacy of vaccines and therapeutic products.
“Dr. Kessler became a trusted advisor to the Biden campaign and President-elect Biden at the start of the pandemic, and has probably briefed Biden 50 or 60 times since March, ”said Anita Dunn, transition team co-chair. “When you ask staff, ‘What are the doctors saying? “We know David Kessler is one of the doctors President-elect Biden expects us to see.”
Dr. Kessler will join Operation Warp Speed at a critical time. While the program is widely credited with making possible the development of two highly effective coronavirus vaccines in record time, it has been far less successful in delivering the vaccines to the public – a complex task it shares with many federal authorities. state and local.
The Trump administration had promised to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of 2020, but as of Thursday, just over 11 million vaccines had been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At some vaccination sites, long lines of elderly people lined up for hours waiting for a vaccine; in others, the lack of willing recipients forces providers to offer injections to random passers-by before the doses expire.
In late fall, Dr. Kessler warned Mr. Biden that Operation Warp Speed was not prepared to send the shots into people’s arms. The transition team said last week that the president-elect intends to create vaccination sites in high school gymnasiums, convention centers and mobile units to reach high-risk populations. Details of the plans are expected Friday.
In addition to working to speed up vaccine delivery across the country, Dr Kessler is expected to put more emphasis on treatment development and he plans to launch a major antiviral development program for the treatment of Covid-19, according to reports. responsible for the transition. He also wants to strengthen the US capacity to manufacture vaccines against the coronavirus as well as the main known pathogens.
Dr Kessler is close to Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease physician who has become the main government voice on the coronavirus pandemic. The two worked closely to accelerate the development and approval of drugs that changed the course of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s.
When George Bush appointed him head of the FDA in 1990, AIDS was raging in the United States. During Dr. Kessler’s tenure, the FDA issued new rules to speed up drug approval. The pharmaceutical industry has developed a class of antiviral drugs to treat AIDS / HIV called protease inhibitors, some of which were approved within 40 days.
“Each of these drugs that I took with Tony,” Dr. Kessler said of Dr. Fauci in an interview. “We did it together. We have approved over a dozen antivirals and antibiotics. We accelerated the approval, but we did it the right way. “
As commissioner, Dr Kessler was also known for his fight against the tobacco industry, which until then had been considered sacrosanct in American politics.
Under his leadership and with the significant help of investigator Jack Mitchell, the FDA has proven that the tobacco industry has known for 50 years that nicotine is an addictive drug and that cigarette manufacturers can control the levels of nicotine in the drug. their products.
This work paved the way for the landmark settlement framework agreement in 1998, which forced the tobacco industry to pay damages estimated at $ 206 billion to states and change the way they advertised. and the sale of tobacco products. It also led to the passage in 2009 of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which ultimately gave the FDA the power to regulate tobacco products.
Dr. Kessler’s other major focus in government was improving America’s diet. As commissioner of the FDA, he developed modern nutrition facts labels that are easy to read and include basic nutritional information that was often overlooked before.
After leaving the FDA, Dr Kessler served as dean of the Yale School of Medicine, followed by a stint as dean and vice-chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco Medical School. After exposing financial irregularities at the university, he was removed from his post as dean, but after an independent auditor concluded he was right, the university apologized and he remained a professor.
In 2018, Dr. Kessler became chairman of the board of directors of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a diet and health watchdog group that often criticizes federal health policy.
He served on the board of directors of Immucor, a supplier of diagnostic transfusion and transplant products, for several years. In 2020, he joined the board of directors of Ellodi Pharmaceuticals, a spin-off of Adare Pharmaceuticals, specializing in gastroenterology-focused drugs.
This week, he resigned from the three boards of directors and is divesting his shares in companies. He said he did not own any shares in pharmaceutical or vaccine-related companies.
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