Under Trump, FDA seeks to abandon expert reviews of new drugs

Source: CBS News

September 12, 2025 / 5:00 AM EDT


FDA leaders under President Trump are moving to abandon a decades-old policy of asking outside experts to review drug applications, a move critics say would shield the agency's decisions from public scrutiny.

The agency "would like to get away" from assembling panels of experts to examine and vote on individual drugs, because "I don't think they're needed," said George Tidmarsh, head of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. He relayed the message Tuesday at a meeting of health care product makers and Wednesday to an FDA advocacy group.

In addition to being redundant, Tidmarsh said, advisory meetings on specific drugs were "a 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."

The FDA's advisory committees were created in their current form by a 1972 law aimed at expanding and regulating the government's use of experts in technical decisions. They're periodically summoned for advice, including to review evidence and vote on whether the FDA should approve drugs, vaccines, and medical devices, often when FDA officials face a difficult decision.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fda-expert-reviews-of-new-drugs/