Obama Narrows List of Candidates for Nominee for FDA Commissioner to Two

President Obama "is moving with some dispatch" to nominate an FDA commissioner and has "winnowed a fairly large field down" to two candidates, the Washington Post reports. One candidate, Baltimore Health Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, previously served as a health care policy adviser to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), and the second candidate, Margaret Hamburg, previously served as an assistant secretary of health and human services for policy and evaluation in the Clinton administration and as a New York City health commissioner.

According to the Post, both candidates have "some heavy-hitting champions," as Waxman and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) support Sharfstein and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) supports Hamburg (Kamen, Washington Post, 2/18).