FDA Announces Renowned Pediatric Ethicist Robert M. Nelson, M.D., to Join Office of Pediatric Therapeutics
The FDA has announced that on October 16, Robert M. Nelson, M.D., M.Div., Ph.D. will join FDA’s Office of Pediatric Therapeutics and will be responsible for providing guidance and advice on ethical issues related to pediatric clinical trials and other pediatric issues involving any product regulated by FDA.
“We are extremely pleased to welcome Dr. Nelson to the Agency. His expertise and experience further bolster our ability to ensure the highest level of scientific and ethical rigor in pediatric clinical research” said Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, Acting Commissioner of Food and Drugs. “Dr. Nelson’s insight and knowledge, both of medicine and ethics, are exceptional and will be of enormous benefit to FDA as we continue to improve our scientific understanding of the medical needs of children, and assure that research activities are conducted according to the best ethical and medical principles.”
Over the past decade, Dr. Nelson has been a consultant on ethical issues in research to the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, FDA, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Institute of Medicine, an independent national advisory organization.
For the past two years, Dr. Nelson has chaired FDA’s Pediatric Advisory Committee, and prior to that he chaired the committee’s Subcommittee on Ethics. He has been a member of several data and safety monitoring boards, and is a reviewer and editorial board member for a number of peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Nelson is also a former Chair of the Committee on Bioethics of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
