Frontrunner to lead FDA, dogged by controversies, has developed knack for confronting them
WASHINGTON — Before he interviewed with President Trump last week to become Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn had only been here once in a formal capacity: to apologize to Congress.
The veteran cancer researcher came to Capitol Hill in 2009 to take responsibility for years of botched care by a doctor under his supervision. Ninety-two U.S. military veterans had been implanted with radioactive “seeds,” meant to fight prostate cancer, at the wrong dose — or in the wrong organ entirely.
It was the first of multiple controversies that have dogged Hahn, who worked then as the chair of radiation oncology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, throughout his career. This year, regulators found MD Anderson Cancer Center, where Hahn works as chief medical executive, in such stark violation of federal rules that the transgressions “substantially limit your hospital’s capacity to render adequate care.” And this spring, Hahn came under fire from MD Anderson employees who saw the dismissals of ethnically Chinese researchers under investigation for unduly influencing U.S. research as racially motivated.
But the Capitol Hill testimony also highlighted Hahn’s political savvy and the knack he has developed for what one MD Anderson official called “institutional turnaround experiences,” even in the spotlight. His handling of both the rules violations and the dismissals at MD Anderson, as well as
