{"id":117701,"date":"2025-11-06T01:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T01:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/117701\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T01:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T01:10:07","slug":"rfk-jr-s-fda-is-in-meltdown-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/117701\/","title":{"rendered":"RFK Jr.’s FDA is in Meltdown Mode"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s mission to \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d doesn\u2019t seem to be going so well. The new \u201chealth czar\u201d continues to preside over the meltdown of America\u2019s most critical health agencies\u2014a development that obviously doesn\u2019t bode well for Americans or their health. Case in point: This weekend, the Food and Drug Administration was thrown into chaos<\/a> after one of its top drug regulators resigned from his position.<\/p>\n

George Tidmarsh was formerly the head of the FDA\u2019s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. However, a lawsuit filed Sunday by Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, has claimed misconduct on Tidmarsh\u2019s part, alleging that he depressed its stock by criticizing one of its drugs on LinkedIn, ABC previously reported<\/a>. In a LinkedIn post, Tidmarsh apparently criticized voclosporin, a drug from Aurinia designed to treat lupus nephritis, an autoimmune disease. He reportedly wrote that voclosporin had \u201cnot been shown to provide a direct clinical benefit for patients\u201d (the lawsuit claims<\/a> these were \u201cfalse and defamatory statements\u201d). He later deleted the post, although the lawsuit claims that Aurinia\u2019s stock plummeted 20 percent as a result of the comments, ABC writes.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the suit claims Tidmarsh had waged a revenge campaign<\/a> of sorts against the company\u2019s board chairman, Kevin Tang. \u201cOver the next six years, Dr. Tidmarsh repeatedly threatened that he would exact revenge against Mr. Tang,\u201d the lawsuit says, according to ABC. The New York Times has added<\/a> that the lawsuit claims Tidmarsh \u201cattempted to extort\u201d Tang, who has been described as a \u201cformer business associate<\/a>\u201d of Tidmarsh. In an interview with the newspaper, Tidmarsh denied the allegations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tidmarsh was also previously criticized because, under his leadership, the FDA has moved away from the expert review of new drugs, CBS previously reported<\/a>. Tidmarsh was quoted as saying that advisory committee meetings for new drugs are \u201ca tremendous amount of work for the company and for the FDA. We want to use that work and our time to focus on the big questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

At any rate, with Tidmarsh\u2019s dramatic exit, that leaves the FDA in a state of flux. In text messages<\/a> shared with Axios, FDA staffers expressed dismay at the chaos roiling the agency. Those text messages, while not shared directly with readers, are described by the outlet as showing \u201cpeople disturbed by the turmoil and increasingly motivated to leave the agency \u2014 a threat heightened by how many experienced career officials have already left.\u201d Axios also talked to former FDA employees and found very much the same: \u201cI don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve talked to anyone who\u2019s happy there,\u201d one former staffer apparently told the outlet.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo reached out to the HHS and FDA for comment. We also sent Mr. Tidmarsh a direct message and reached out to Aurinia Pharmaceuticals. A spokesperson for the FDA told the Times that, prior to his resignation, Tidmarsh had been placed on administrative leave \u201cafter the office of the general counsel and the office of the inspector general were notified of serious concerns about his personal conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he hasn\u2019t been in office very long, Kennedy\u2019s reign as America\u2019s health czar has been marked by significant disruption and mayhem within the HHS. A number of agencies have seen significant turnover and layoffs. Earlier this year, the HHS fired thousands of staff<\/a> and, more recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saw a number of top officials step down in protest of Kennedy\u2019s policies. Kennedy also fired all members<\/a> of the CDC\u2019s vaccine advisory committee. Last month, in an unprecedented move, six former U.S. Surgeons General wrote an op-ed<\/a> characterizing Kennedy as a \u201cprofound, immediate and unprecedented threat\u201d to Americans\u2019 health and suggesting that he step down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s mission to \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d doesn\u2019t seem to be going so well. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[163,85,46,482],"class_list":{"0":"post-117701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}