Obama focuses on food safety, picks FDA new chief

[dolphin]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090314/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_food_safety

Anyone know more info on Margaret Hamburg...hmmmm wonder how we should "read between the lines of this appointment"
i wouldn't be surprised if she is bildegerg, cfr, etc. member as most of his appointments have been!

"WASHINGTON – The nation's food safety system is a "hazard to public health" and overdue for an overhaul, President Barack Obama said Saturday as he focused on that task by filling the top job at the Food and Drug Administration.

Obama used his weekly radio and video address to announce the nomination of former New York City Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg as agency commissioner and selection of Baltimore's health commissioner, Joshua Sharfstein as her deputy. Consumer groups applauded the picks.

The president also is creating a special advisory group to coordinate food safety laws and recommend how to update them. Many of these laws have not changed since they were written early in the last century, he said.

Obama said the food safety system is too spread out, making it difficult to share information and solve problems.

The FDA does not have enough money or workers to conduct annual inspections at more than a fraction of the 150,000 food processing plants and warehouses in the country, Obama said.

"That is a hazard to public health. It is unacceptable. And it will change under the leadership of Dr. Margaret Hamburg," he pledged.

Hamburg, 53, is a bioterrorism expert. She was an assistant health secretary under President Bill Clinton and helped lay the groundwork for the government's bioterrorism and flu pandemic preparations.

As New York City's top health official in the early 1990s, she created a program that cut high rates of drug-resistant tuberculosis. She is the daughter of two doctors. Her mother was the first black woman to earn a medical degree from Yale University, and she credits her father for instilling in her a passion for public health...."

[Dantheman62]

Margaret Hamburg, "one of the youngest people ever elected to the Institute of Medicine (IoM, an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences), is a highly regarded expert in community health and bio-defense, including preparedness for nuclear, biological, and chemical threats. As health commissioner for New York City from 1991 to 1997, she developed innovative programs for controlling the spread of tuberculosis and AIDS.

"Margaret Hamburg is the daughter of Beatrix and David Hamburg, both distinguished physicians and early role models for her career in medicine. Her mother was the first African-American woman to attend Vassar College and to earn a degree from the Yale University School of Medicine (which had previously excluded black students). Her Jewish father and grandmother taught her to value education and family and to fight discrimination and oppression.

"When she was inducted into the prestigious Institute of Medicine in 1994, she had followed the path of her parents, both IoM members since the 1970s. "There was a sense of real fun that the father-mother-daughter constellation had been formed," said Hamburg.

"Hamburg is a graduate of Radcliffe College. She earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and completed her training at the New York Hospital/Cornell University Medical Center. She did research in neuroscience at Rockefeller University in New York from 1985 to1986 and in neuropharmacology (the study of the action of drugs on the nervous system) at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

"From 1986 to 1988, she served in the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and from 1989 to 1990 she was assistant director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH, where her work focused on AIDS research.

"In 1993, Dr. Hamburg was President Clinton's first choice for the newly created post of federal AIDS coordinator. Pregnant with her first child at that time, Hamburg declined, putting motherhood first. President Clinton selected her in 1997 to be assistant secretary for policy and evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This time she accepted.

"Since 2001, she has been vice president for biological programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation dedicated to reducing the threat to public safety from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. She is a leading advocate for changes in the nation's public health policies and infrastructure, from local health departments to the highest levels of government, to meet the challenges presented by modern bioterrorism. She is a distinguished senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Dr. Hamburg is married to Peter Fitzhugh Brown, an artificial intelligence expert, and the couple have two children. Interestingly, she was the first New York City health commissioner to give birth while in office, so her children's birth certificates bear her name in two places: as their mother and as health commissioner.“ [1]

Trustee, Rockefeller Foundation
Director, Century Foundation
Director, Doctors of the World [1]
Advisory Board, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Margaret_Hamburg


Dr. Hamburg is the daughter of David Hamburg, a world-renowned physician and himself a trustee emeritus of The Rockefeller University, and Beatrix Hamburg, who was the first African-American woman to be admitted to Vassar College and to earn a degree from the Yale University School of Medicine.

[Rainchild]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28265751/

Obama picked Gov Tom Vilsack as secretary for Department of agriculture. Vilsack is a HUGE promoter for GMO foods. He's practically in monsanto's pocket!