Fabrizio Felloni, senior evaluation officer, independent office of evaluation at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), Rome, Italy.
Fabrizio Felloni, senior evaluation officer, independent office of evaluation at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), Rome, Italy Use cost-saving tools: It makes economic sense to embark on an expensive evaluation using large sample surveys if the project being evaluated is large.
"We have become increasingly concerned," said Dr. Victor Raczkowski, deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration's office of drug evaluation.
Dr. Florence Houn, director of the agency's office of drug evaluation, said it was not yet known whether the problems were actually caused by the drug.
Mr. Ermarth's previous jobs included one in which he worked on the office of strategic evaluation at the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1970's.
"Due to its prevalence, osteoporosis is a serious concern to public health," Dr. Julie Beitz, director of an F.D.A. office of drug evaluation, said in a statement.
Dr. Dan Schultz, deputy director of the F.D.A.'s office of device evaluation, said that different branches of the agency regulate the two types of tissue, though the two branches jointly inspect tissue processors.
Dr. Donna-Bea Tillman, director of the agency's office of device evaluation, sent an e-mail message on April 10 announcing an "all-hands meeting" to discuss the strategic direction of the device center.
"We decided we needed to reanalyze the complex dataset ourselves to make a better informed decision," Dr. Robert J. Meyer, a director of the agency's office of drug evaluation, said in a news conference yesterday.
Christy Foreman, acting director for the F.D.A.'s office of device evaluation, said that Gambro fixed its dialysis device after the 2005 recall so that its approval did not need to be rescinded.
Though other drugs in its class, called statins, have been linked to muscle cell damage in rare cases, the problem is much more common with Baycol than with other such drugs, said Dr. John Jenkins, the director of the office of drug evaluation at the F.D.A. Statins are wildly popular drugs taken by millions of Americans.
