Andrew von Eschenbach recounts his stint as the head of both FDA and NCI—simultaneously

Preserving an oral history by the 20th Commissioner of Food and Drugs

In an oral history conducted by FDA in September 2013, Andrew C. von Eschenbach recounted his eight-month stint in a dual role as both FDA acting commissioner and NCI director.

In the interview, von Eschenbach walks through his childhood in south Philly, his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, and his journey from Philadelphia to Texas for a year-long fellowship at MD Anderson, where he thought his four young children could temporarily “play cowboy.” Twenty-six years later, he was still at MD Anderson, and his children consider themselves Texans.

The bulk of the oral history, however, focused on von Eschenbach’s first-hand account of his attempt to lead two government entities at the same time: FDA and NCI.

Von Eschenbach became NCI director in 2002 (The Cancer Letter, Feb. 8, Jan. 25, 2002). When he was picked by then-President George W. Bush to be acting commissioner of FDA four years later, von Eschenbach said that he would continue as NCI director and that the FDA job was an “interim role.” Still, he said would give both jobs 100% (The Cancer Letter, Sept. 30, 2005).

Von Eschenbach’s oral history, along with 301 others conducted by FDA, have been hidden following the Trump administration’s order to purge government websites containing anything related to DEI or gender. The PDFs with transcriptions of the interviews are still online, but the central FDA landing page which formerly directed users to the agency’s collection of oral histories has been removed. (The Cancer Letter, Feb. 28, 2025)

Read more in The Cancer Letter

Oral history topic: History of the Food and Drug Administration

Date of interview: September 25, 2013