Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) recently introduced legislation that would bar the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from employing individuals with ties to “adversarial foreign” nations, specifically China, Russia and Iran, the legislator’s office announced on Monday.
“The oversight of our food and medicine is too important to allow corruption from adversarial foreign nationals,” Cotton said. “My bill will establish safeguards at FDA to protect Americans’ health and intellectual property.”
Specifically, the American Medicine Safety and Security Act would prohibit the FDA from employing Chinese, Russian and Iranian nationals and require current and future FDA employees to report whether any of their family members are from those countries.
The bill would also restrict employees from accessing drug or device data housed within divisions outside of the one in which they are employed if they formerly worked at an entity based in any of the three countries or if a member of their immediate family is a Chinese, Russian or Iranian national.
Lastly, the legislation would prohibit FDA employees from working for entities operating in China, Russia or Iran for 10 years after their employment with the federal agency.
