Former FDA chief David Kessler will helm Operation Warp Speed for Biden

WASHINGTON — President-elect Biden has tapped David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration chief and a key adviser to his campaign, to lead the president-elect’s version of the Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, a Biden official told STAT.
Kessler is something of a controversial choice. His list of accomplishments at the FDA — he pushed the agency to expand its role to regulate tobacco, he implemented the user fee system and the adverse event reporting system — is long and bold. But until he began advising the Biden campaign on the pandemic , he had not worked in government for more than 20 years, since serving as Clinton’s FDA commissioner. Read the rest…