FDA Increases Staff By Ten Percent

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Thursday that it has hired 1,317 people to better protect public health amid an environment of accelerating technological change.

The stress-ridden agency has struggled to contend with a series of drug and food safety problems that has damaged its reputation. It said its new personnel, who represent a 10 percent increase in staff, would provide important expertise after years of losing valuable employees to the private sector or retirement.

"Every pay period, we have had more than 100 people walking through our doors," Kimberly Holden, the senior manager directing the recruitment initiative, told the AP.

"We have had some people who left to go into industry and ended up wanting to come back. The revolving door swings this way every once in a while."

Experts say the increase, while needed, is only a first step. 

"This is really just bringing them back to where they were in earlier years,” William Hubbard, a former agency associate commissioner, told the AP.  Hubbard now heads a lobbying effort for sustaining increases in the FDA’s budget, which is currently about $2.2 billion annually, with nearly $1.7 billion coming from taxpayers and the rest from industry user fees.

"It restores losses that they have incurred, but they still have a long way to go to where they can make improvements," said Hubbard, referring to the new staff.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), who oversees the FDA’s budget in the House, called the agency’s initiative “welcome news". 

However, "It is critical that the next president requests a funding level for FDA that will maintain and increase personnel as part of a long-term effort to improve FDA’s management," he said.

FDA officials reported that about 1,000 of the new hires have already started working, with another 158 set to report later this month.  An additional 160 workers have accepted offers and are currently undergoing the process of background checks.

Of those at work, more than 850 are professionals, such as biologists, chemists, pharmacologists, statisticians, medical officers, field inspectors and microbiologists.

The agency said that 770 of the 1,317 positions are newly created jobs, while 547 are posts vacated by staff leaving the agency for other jobs or retirement. 

The largest number of new jobs within the agency is for the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which analyzes new medications and monitors the safety of drugs on the market.  The center will get 663 new personnel, while the smaller food safety program will see a 10 percent increase with an additional 104 people. The agency’s enforcement branch, which had lost many field inspectors, will receive 245 new staffers.

About 40 percent of the new positions are being funded by industry user fees, with those new hires primarily moving into positions evaluating new drugs or medical devices or monitoring safety issues.

The FDA struggled to fill certain positions, such as cancer specialists. While the agency hired nine, another 20 turned down offers.

"They could not make the money they would be making on the outside if they came into public service," Holden said.

She said the agency could offer up to $275,000 a year, but oncologists can make as much as $400,000 annually in their profession.

Congress approved the hiring initiative, launched last spring, and the Bush administration granted the agency special authority to make on-the-spot offers.

The overall goal is to have hired all 1,317 staffers by the end of the month.

Arthur Levin, director of the Center for Medical Consumers in New York, told the Associated Press the initiative shows that highly specialized professionals are still attracted to public service.

However, he warned that the FDA has a history of letting such progress fetter away.

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the FDA hired food inspectors to guard against the threat of bio-terrorism, but then gradually cut the program back.   The result was that the agency was caught unprepared for various outbreaks of foodborne illness.

"Cost-of-living increases don’t ever seem to be part of the funding from Congress," said Levin.

"It may be that they hire all these people now, but they can’t afford them down the line."

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