Von Eschenbach's Two Hats

Let's see if I have this right:

The Bush administration, under fire for appointing incompetent cronies to key positions, learns late last week that the Food and Drug Administration commissioner owns stock in a drug distributor. A high administration official calls Lester Crawford and asks him to resign. He does.

This same official or group of officials gets on the phone to Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, who runs the National Cancer Institute after a long career at the Houston-based M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. He has no particular experience in evaluating the safety of food, drugs, medical devices, or dietary supplements, the primary job of FDA. However, he does serve with George (Sr.) and Barbara Bush on the board of C-Change, a partially industry-funded advocacy group for speeding the pace of cancer drug approvals. He gets the interim job at FDA.

However, von Eschenbach insists on keeping his NCI post, where his mission is to run an agency charged with developing new drugs to treat cancer. Moreover, while in that position he has developed deep ties with the drug industry. He advocates for relying on new and untested markers for measuring drug effectiveness. He sets a goal of turning cancer into a manageable disease by 2015, which causes many oncologists to cringe.

There was immediate and bipartisan outrage at the administration's inability to perceive that this appointment, even on an interim basis, was a blatant conflict of interest. Senators Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Dick Grassley (R-Ia.) immediately condemned the von Eschenbach choice.

A prediction: The Bushies, reeling in the polls, will move quickly to find a permanent replacement for Crawford. The von Eschenbach appointment, made in haste, is a liability they just don't need at this point.