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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 25, 2002

Nomination
President Bush Announced His Intention to Nominate Mark McClellan to be Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration

President George W. Bush today announced his intention to nominate Mark B. McClellan to be Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. McClellan is currently a member of the President's Council on Economic Advisors, and he also serves as a senior policy director for health care and related economic issues for the White House.

"As a doctor and researcher, Mark McClellan is uniquely qualified to serve as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. His experience will be very valuable as the FDA faces new challenges in the coming year, including the implementation of legislation I recently signed to help protect the nation from bioterrorism threats, to help speed access to breakthrough medical treatments, and to make medical treatments safer. As head of the FDA, Mark will focus on empowering consumers and ensuring rapid access to products that are safe and effective," said President Bush.

Dr. McClellan was confirmed as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers by the Senate on July 19, 2001. Before joining the CEA, he was Associate Professor of Economics at Stanford University, Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford Medical School, a practicing internist, and Director of the Program on Health Outcomes Research at Stanford University. He was also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Additionally, he was a Member of the National Cancer Policy Board of the National Academy of Sciences, Associate Editor of the Journal of Health Economics, and co-Principal Investigator of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a longitudinal study of the health and economic well-being of older Americans. From 1998-99, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, where he supervised economic analysis and policy development on a wide range of domestic policy issues.

His research studies have addressed measuring and improving the quality of health care, the economic and policy factors influencing medical treatment decisions, technological change in health care and its consequences for health and medical expenditures, uninsurance, and the relationship between health and economic well-being. He has twice received the Arrow Award for Outstanding Research in Health Economics. He earned his MD degree from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and his PhD in Economics from MIT. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and he is board-certified in Internal Medicine.

Dr. McClellan is married and has two three-year old daughters.

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