Liz Essley Whyte

This is a study that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

and former FDA Commissioner Marty McCary had promised to Republican lawmakers, but sources inside the administration had been saying that it hadn't really gotten started.

Now we know that it's been kicked into high gear.

In addition to having its own study done with its own drug safety monitoring systems, we know that the

The administration is considering hiring a contractor to look at additional data on the safety of the abortion pill and the way it is currently used.

Today, the FDA commissioner, Dr. Marty McCary, resigned.

And how big a deal is that?

I think it's a huge deal.

He had a tumultuous tenure.

full of intrigue and palace drama and politics and conflict in a way that we haven't really seen with any other FDA commissioner.

He's managed to make a lot of critics in the pharmaceutical industry who view him as unsympathetic to the cause of rare disease patients.

He has been targeted by anti-abortion advocates who called for his resignation after he promised a review of the safety of the abortion pill and has not produced it.

But the vaping argument is what really catalyzed

The movement towards, let's go ahead and pull the plug here.

Well, the president made a commitment to the vaping industry in his 2024 presidential campaign.

He ran on a platform of Let's Save Vaping.

His advisors had identified that constituency as important to his base.

They viewed it as a way to reach young MAGA voters.

There were a lot of factors that led to this moment, but the vaping situation seems to have been an accelerant on the firestorm here.

It is what seems to have sped up his ouster.