Two high-level regulatory officials with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) involved in vaccine oversight accepted jobs at Moderna just months after signing off on the licensure of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, according to a British Medical Journal (BMJ) investigation. The report by Dr. Peter Doshi, associate professor at the University of Maryland School […]

It would appear to be a happy and satisfying relationship. "Our priorities are aligned," says one document. There have been "notable successes" says another, citing "another example" of where the two sides "cooperated well". In business partners, this would seem to indicate a harmony of views. The documents obtained by the Guardian, however, relate to meetings between the drug industry and the watchdog body set up by government to police it.

Gottlieb stepped down abruptly as the FDA chief in March this year, a role he had held since May 2017. Unlike his predecessors, who said drug pricing was not the purview of the FDA, Gottlieb waded into the intensifying debate about the high cost of medicines for U.S. consumers and had the agency actively looking into possible solutions. Gottlieb ran into fierce opposition from anti-regulation groups such as Americans for Tax Reform and former FDA officials, who said the agency's regulatory efforts would destroy thousands of jobs.