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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius paid her first
visit to the FDA's White Oak facility.
How are you?
I'm great!
Good.
You work here?
I'm a regular employee here yes I am.
I love it.
Good.
The Secretary said she came to show her support for the agency and its
employees who are entrusted with the job of insuring that the food we
eat and the medical products we use are safe and available.
The EMC lab is.... Following a private meeting with Commissioner
Dr. Peggy Hamburg, the Secretary met with FDA department heads.
this is Dr. Jesse Goodman who is chief scientist for the FDA.
Ah, good to see you again.
Welcome.
Much of the FDA's new campus is lab space.
Highly specialized cutting edge facilities used to guide the agency's
regulatory decisions.
The Commissioner and the Secretary toured one of the most unique
laboratories.
Well, this is the electromagnetics and the wireless laboratory...
The lab tests the compatibility of various wireless and medical
devices.
The goal is to determine how they interact...for instance to test if a cell
phone can adversely affect a pacemaker.
the world as you know is going wireless and wireless devices can now
be found everywhere, they're portable, your blackberry,
your cell phone so its almost impossible to tell where they are going to be
in relation to any medical device.
So we have to look at the way they play together in an almost unimaginable set
of combinations.
One thing that I think is important to note is that this kind of research is
sort of uniquely done by FDA because every single manufacturer of a
different device you know really can't take the time or have the resources to
do this kind of work to evaluate all the external influences...
this laboratory is highly unique.
We have not only the facilities, we have a forty-year history doing
this kind of testing here.
We have highly trained personnel we have the medical devices and we're
really the only ones that do this sort of testing in the nation.
And given the rapid development of technology you must constantly have
to update what you are doing because...
Exactly.
Oh my heavens look at this.
Wow.
Inside the lab, Dr. Beard also showed the Secretary and the Commissioner this
special chamber.
It's used to test medical devices without interference from radio
waves.
A lot of the test methods that have been developed specifically for medical
devices have been done here in this laboratory.
For the FDA staff the highlight of the morning came when they got to meet
the Secretary and the Commissioner first hand.
More than 500 literally lined the walls and cross walks of the new building
housing the Center for Devices and Radiological Health and a thousand more
across the country joined through a live webcast.
We hope that this will be the first of many productive visits out to
White Oak and I know that it will be a very exciting and productive tenure for
Secretary Sebelius here at the Department of Health and Human Services.
So I really look forward to hearing her remarks and again thank her for her
time and consideration in coming out here and express my excitement
about the opportunity to work with her on the many important public health
issues before us all.
Secretary Sebelius... (applause) Good morning.
If you haven't turned around yet to see your colleagues silhouetted
against that window it's quite a dramatic sight.
I appreciate Dr Hamburg's warm welcome and introduction and certainly
appreciate her willingness to step into this critical leadership role.
You have a terrific new leader here at the Food and Drug Administration
and it comes at a very important time when so many issues involving the
safety of the American people are coming through this agency.
Now the Food and Drug Administration is taking on a very exciting
new challenge the historic regulation of tobacco products to reduce the
enormous toll taken on the health of the American people by smoking and
tobacco related illnesses.
I want to assure you that President Obama understands how important
a strong FDA is and so do I.
And that's why the presidents budget contains an historic increase for
this agency and that's why I'm here today to discuss key issues with
Dr. Hamburg, and the deputy commissioner Sharpstein and others on
the FDA team because you are at the forefront of some of the most critical
health and safety discussions taking place anywhere in the world.
So again I'm here today to primarily say thank you, thank you for the great
work you do each and every day, thank you for the work you are going to put
on toward regulation of tobacco long overdue in this country but you are
the leaders who are at the forefront of that initiative and thank you
for being part of this amazing agency.
Because of your work, Americans are safer and healthy each and every
day.
(applause) Hi, hi...
Following her remarks...the Secretary and the Commissioner waded
into the audience and took the opportunity to thank FDA staffers personally
for their hard work and dedication.
Nice to meet you...
Nice to see you...
Almost immediately following this meeting, the Secretary and
Commissioner prepared for a television interview with MSNBC host,
Dr. Nancy Snyderman.
On her new broadcast the Commissioner and the Secretary stressed how
they are working to protect the public health.
Secretary Sebelius, and Dr. Hamburg thank you both so much for joining us
today.
So Ms. Sebelius, former governor Sebelius, what is your priority when you
look at HHS, and I know you're visiting the FDA today but what is your
priority?
Well I think the mission is pretty straightforward.
It's improving the health of the American public and delivering essential
services to some of our most vulnerable populations.
Dr. Hamburg I'd like to pull you in at this point.
With all the FDA has on its plate now including tobacco regulation,
can you explain how you look after the well-being of the American populous
and still regulate what we know is a killer?
The FDA is the only science based public health agency with a
regulatory mission so we are the appropriate place to take on this challenge
of tobacco.
There are many steps that we'll be taking that will make an enormous
difference in reducing the risk of what we know is a very dangerous product.
It was a full morning.
The Secretary left with a deeper understanding of all that is done at the
FDA, and the Agency was left knowing that it has a committed partner in
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Thank you so much for coming out.
Sure.
it was a huge shot in the arm to the agency.
this is good...