Lander's resignation potentially imperils Biden's scientific agenda

In interviews with STAT, White House aides and outside research experts worried that the scandal will delay or undercut several of the administration’s key scientific priorities: appointing a new biomedical research chief; relaunching the “Cancer Moonshot”; retooling federal pandemic preparedness; and creating a new agency geared toward biomedical breakthroughs…

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The resignation is a major blow to the Biden administration’s broader scientific agenda, which is already floundering. The National Institutes of Health is currently without a director. Even Senate Democrats have yet to rally behind Robert Califf, Biden’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration. Increasingly, there are questions about whether health secretary Xavier Becerra is a player in either process, or in the federal pandemic response.

And Lander was an uncommonly central player in Biden’s life sciences ambitions. His appointment in itself was historic: He is the first White House science adviser to sit in the president’s Cabinet; the first from a life sciences background; and the first to create an entire wing of OSTP devoted to biology, medicine, and human health.

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