HOUSE OPERATIONS/INTERGOVERNMENTAL SUBCMTE. AIDE ZELLER MOVES TO FDA

HOUSE OPERATIONS/INTERGOVERNMENTAL SUBCMTE. AIDE ZELLER MOVES TO FDA April 19 to become special assistant to Deputy Commissioner for Policy Michael Taylor. Mitchell Zeller has worked as an aide to the House Government Operations/Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee since late 1988 and is the last professional staff member who served under the late Chairman Rep. Weiss (D-N.Y.), who died last September and has been succeeded by Rep. Towns (D-N.Y.). The subcommittee was reorganized on Feb. 18 but will continue to oversee FDA operations. The new chairman is said to be interested in health care reform and in ensuring that user fee revenues are used to expedite the agency's drug approval process. However, in the wake of Weiss' death ("The Pink Sheet" Sept. 21, 1992, T&G-8) and the departure of his staff, the subcommittee is not likely to continue the kind of detailed scrutiny of FDA's scientific decisionmaking it conducted in the past. FDA issues Zeller worked on include FDA policy concessions to the Bush Administration's Council on Competitiveness, the label claims approved by FDA for the anti-arrhythmic drugs Tambocor and Enkaid, contamination problems with the nutritional supplement L- tryptophan, health claims for foods, and animal drug residues.