Health Watch: Wellness, Research & Healthy Living Tips
- F.D.A. introduced Elsa, an A.I. large-language model, useful for basic review tasks but prone to hallucinations and character limits.
- Officials propose faster approvals, sometimes accepting one major patient study, citing Operation Warp Speed precedent, drawing skepticism about safety and feasibility.
- F.D.A. plans renewed review of chemical additives and artificial dyes in food, reevaluating benefit to harm balance for children and public health.
- Critics warn the F.D.A. risks cozy industry ties after closed-door CEO tours, and staff cuts reduce inspection and review capacity.
The Food and Drug Administration is planning to use artificial intelligence to “radically increase efficiency” in deciding whether to approve new drugs and devices, one of several top priorities laid out in an article published Tuesday in JAMA.
Another initiative involves a review of chemicals and other “concerning ingredients” that appear in U.S. food but not in the food of other developed nations. And officials want to speed up the final stages of making a drug or medical device approval decision to mere weeks, citing the success of Operation Warp Speed during the Covid pandemic when workers raced to curb a spiraling death count.
“The F.D.A. will be focused on delivering faster cures and meaningful treatments for patients, especially those with neglected and rare diseases, healthier food for children and common-sense approaches to rebuild the public trust,” Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner, and Dr. Vinay Prasad, who leads the division that oversees vaccines and gene therapy, wrote in the JAMA article.
The agency plays a central role in pursuing the agenda of the U.S. health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and it has already begun to press food makers to eliminate artificial food dyes. The new road map also underscores the Trump administration’s efforts to smooth the way for major industries with an array of efforts aimed at getting products to pharmacies and store shelves quickly.
Some aspects of the proposals outlined in JAMA were met with skepticism, particularly the idea that artificial intelligence is up to the task of shearing months or years from the painstaking work of examining applications that companies submit when seeking approval for a drug or high-risk medical device.
“I don’t want to be dismissive of speeding reviews at the F.D.A.,” said Stephen Holland, a lawyer who formerly advised the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on health care. “I think that there is great potential here, but I’m not seeing the beef yet.”
A major A.I. rollout closely follows the release of a report by Mr. Kennedy’s MAHA Commission, which uses an acronym for Make America Healthy Again, that was found to be rife with references to scientific research apparently fabricated by an artificial intelligence program.
For some cases, the F.D.A. officials proposed speeding major drug approvals by requiring only one major study in patients rather than two, a practice the agency has used in recent years. The pandemic provided a precedent, they said, for accelerating the process.
“We believe this is clear demonstration that rapid or instant reviews are possible,” Drs. Makary and Prasad wrote.
But Mr. Holland pointed out that during the pandemic, many staff members were transferred from routine duties, including overseas inspections of food or drug facilities, and reassigned to hasten critical Covid product reviews.
The agency was also better staffed. In recent months, the F.D.A. shed about 1,940 employees, reducing the work force to 8,000 from roughly 10,000.
Last week, the agency introduced Elsa, an artificial intelligence large-language model similar to ChatGPT. The F.D.A. said it could be used to prioritize which food or drug facilities to inspect, to describe side effects in drug safety summaries and to perform other basic product-review tasks. The F.D.A. officials wrote that A.I. held the promise to “radically increase efficiency” in examining as many as 500,000 pages submitted for approval decisions.
Current and former health officials said the A.I. tool was helpful but far from transformative. For one, the model limits the number of characters that can be reviewed, meaning it is unable to do some rote data analysis tasks. Its results must be checked carefully, so far saving little time.
Staff members said that the model was hallucinating, or producing false information. Employees can ask the Elsa model to summarize text or act as an expert in a particular field of medicine.
Dr. Makary said the A.I. models were not being trained by data submitted by the drug or medical device industry.
When it comes to food oversight, Drs. Makary and Prasad said there would be a renewed focus on “our increasingly chemically manipulated diet,” a goal embraced by Republicans and Democrats. “For all additives,” the article said, “the benefit-to-harm balance must be re-evaluated.”
Although the Trump administration is seeking steep cuts in the F.D.A.’s budget for the next fiscal year, the food division is expected to receive additional funds.
Others noted the fine line agency officials were walking, given Mr. Kennedy’s complaints that the F.D.A. is too close to the drug industry and the Trump administration’s business-friendly approach.
Drs. Makary and Prasad wrote that the F.D.A. must be “partners with industry” while avoiding “a cozy relationship that has characterized the agency in the past.”
Dr. Reshma Ramachandran, a director of the Yale Collaboration for Regulatory Rigor, Integrity and Transparency, pointed out that Drs. Makary and Prasad were going on a six-city, closed-door listening tour to meet with chief executives of the drug industry.
“How is this guarding the agency ‘against a cozy relationship’ with industry?” she asked. The F.D.A. priorities “read as though they’re straight out of PhRMA’s playbook,” she said, referring to the trade group.
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