[FlameOn]

On top of the Covid-19 vaccine ordering fiasco, Trump's Department of Health and Human services department finalized a rule to require all Food and Drug Administration regulations to expire in 10 years unless they are manually reviewed in another move designed to cripple the incoming administration. Guessing first thing Biden admin appointees will do is reverse this. Hopefully no lasting damage is done here unlike with the vaccine mess that will get people killed.

Perhaps the most dramatic meddling came on Monday, when FDA officials were blindsided as the agency cycled through three different top lawyers. FDA’s Chief Counsel, Stacy Cline Amin—a Trump appointee—resigned Monday, which FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn announced in an email. Hahn’s email also included the news that career civil servant Mark Raza, the FDA’s principal deputy chief counsel, would serve as Cline Amin’s replacement on an acting basis. But that decision was abruptly overturned Monday night when the Department of Health and Human services tweeted that James Lawrence, deputy general counsel for the HHS, would serve as the FDA’s new chief counsel until January 20.

"We were all very surprised," a senior FDA official told Politico. "But it's consistent with all the fire bombs that keep getting thrown over the fence."

Last week, HHS said it had finalized a rule that would cause all FDA regulations to expire after 10 years unless they are reviewed. Critics of the rule, called Securing Updated and Necessary Statutory Evaluations Timely or “SUNSET,” noted that the FDA already has mechanisms to sunset outdated regulations, making automatic expiration dates unnecessary. But in a statement announcing the rule, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said that “finalizing our SUNSET rule will deliver for the American people better, smarter, less burdensome regulations in the years to come.”

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021...n-its-way-out/