Protesters’ goodbye for Scott Gottlieb: a supersized heroin spoon and claims FDA did too little on opioids
WASHINGTON — Activists on Friday delivered a parting gift to Scott Gottlieb, the outgoing Food and Drug Administration commissioner, at the entrance of a federal building here: an 800-pound, supersized heroin spoon stamped with the FDA’s logo.
The group urged FDA to stop approving “dangerous” opioids and to instead encourage the development of more drugs to treat addiction. Many protesters decried the November approval of Dsuvia, a mega-potent pain drug, and urged the Trump administration to nominate an FDA commissioner who would take a different tack than Gottlieb on opioid approvals.
The protest comes after a series of demonstrations at museums, the now-infamous founders of Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. But Friday’s event, which took place just five blocks from the Arthur M. Sackler art gallery on the National Mall, marked a shift in protesters’ focus from the pharmaceutical industry to government.
