Activities
Harvey W. Wiley Award Presentation Given by Richard Merrill
Established six years ago, the Harvey W. Wiley Award was presented April 22, 2010 during the annual meeting of the Food and Drug Law Institute.
In his introductory remarks, Alan Andersen, President of the FDAAA, noted that the winner of the award named after Dr. Wiley, champion of the Pure Food and Drugs Act, was especially deserving of the honor since he greatly influenced food and drug law. Richard A. Merrill is the Daniel Caplin Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Virginia Law School, Counsel to Covington & Burling, and previous FDA Chief Counsel. A Rhodes scholar, Dick Merrill was Dean of the UVA Law School. Until recently, he was General Counsel and Member of the Executive Committee of FDAAA.
Dick Merrill said he was pleased to be on the platform where the new FDA Commissioner and General Counsel had been. In 1975, when he was Chief Counsel at FDA the agency was less complex than it is today. Essentially there were three parts, a Bureau for Medicine, for Food and for Inspection and Enforcement. The National Center for Toxicological Research was there also and the FDA had recently inherited both Radiation Products with Dave Link and Larry Pilot handling medical devices and Vaccines and other Biological Products. At the 1977 rededication of NCTR the featured speaker was William Jefferson Clinton.
At that time, the statute under which FDA functioned was a basic good start. Subsequent years with Hatch Waxman, Medical Device Amendments and other laws caused it to be richer and longer. Peter Barton Hutt produced a survey on what happened in the legislative branch from 1988 to 2007. The number of statutes produced each year was surprising. Some empowered and enabled the agency while some restricted and curtailed FDA’s activity. Dick closed by saying he hoped future statutes would be more supportive of FDA.