OTHER NEWS - March 6, 1992

FDA to Hire Staff, Speed OK of Medical Products: The Food and Drug Administration is hiring more staff to cut delays between the time medical products are developed and when they can go on the market, the FDA commissioner said. “We know that review time is critical to the industry--that you cannot wait years for a response and remain viable or competitive,” Commissioner David Kessler said in a speech to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council in Boston. “We are positioning ourselves to meet the demands of an ever-growing number of product-licensing applications while the number of actual product applications is still manageable,” he said.