In January, President Obama issued an executive order demanding that government agencies, including FDA, submit a plan for reviewing existing regulations. Their aim, he said, should be to examine rules that could be outmoded, ineffective, insufficient or excessively burdensome, and to "modify, streamline, expand or repeal" them based on accumulated knowledge.

Did anyone miss President Obama's recent announcement that he plans to put an end to corporate tax loopholes (a mainstay for every major pharma and biotech company in the world....)More from Bloomberg and the President himself. 

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Forum for Medical Innovation in downtown Chicago, hosted by the Council for American Medical Innovation and moderated by former U.S. House of Representatives majority leader Dick Gephardt. The event also featured AstraZeneca CEO David Brennan as a guest speaker. David Brennan

Biswant Korrapati, CEO of Move Records which presents rapper Mekka Don (a trained lawyer), apparently used to work at Novartis. 

Several names are being bandied about as leading candidates for the position of FDA commissioner in the Obama adminstration. They include Duke University's Robert Califf, Cleveland Clinic's Steven Nissen, Baltimore health commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, and George Washington U. professor Susan Wood.

Just saw the Obama/Biden "fact sheet for science" outlining some ambitious goals for the incoming Administration.  Its cornerstones: