Oops! Trump Accidentally Fired FDA Medical Device Reviewers
Turns out people want to know their pacemaker won't accidentally kill them.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is scrambling to rehire some of the roughly 700 employees who were laid off en masse by the Trump administration earlier this month, with a particular emphasis on the more than 220 people in the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.
Staffers at the unit are responsible for reviewing and approving medical devices like X-ray machines, surgical implants, pacemakers, heart pumps, ventilators and numerous other types of critical medical equipment.
They also maintain a database of devices that could inadvertently harm patients and need to be recalled.
The agency didn't immediately respond to a request from HuffPost regarding how many employees were laid off and how many they're hoping to rehire.
Sources familiar with the mass firings told the industry publication BioPharma Dive that 'most, if not all' of the employees are being asked to return to their jobs.
'The disarray caused by the wholesale termination of a wide swath of device center staff was counterproductive and appears to have caused a variety of unintended and negative results,' Steve Silverman, a former FDA device official, told The Associated Press. 'It's encouraging to see a shift in the opposite direction that recognizes the critical expertise of these staffers.'
Medical device manufacturers benefit when scientists on staff at the CDRH can approve their products quickly. More than half of the program's $791 million annual budget is paid for by private companies in the industry.
As a result, the mass layoffs ordered by the 'Department of Government Efficiency' didn't actually contribute much to the agency's bottom line.
Last week, Jim Jones, the head of the foods division at the FDA, resigned, saying the Trump administration had 'indiscriminately' fired 89 staffers there who oversaw food safety in the country.
DOGE, at the behest of billionaire Elon Musk, fired and then was forced to rehire people who manage the nuclear stockpile, scientists working on containing avian flu, military veterans who run a national crisis line, the people who oversee America's hugely popular national parks, the people who run the health program for first responders injured during the 9/11 attacks, and people who run a federal power plant that provides power in the Pacific Northwest.
And in a separate but related DOGE development Tuesday, 21 civil service employees who'd been reassigned to work for Musk resigned after being asked to dismantle what they described as 'critical public services.'
All The Times DOGE S**t Had To Be Cleaned Up
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says Entire Departments Of The FDA 'Have To Go'
DOGE Staffers Resign After Being Asked To Dismantle 'Critical Public Services'
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