Frances Oldham Kelsey Leaves Legacy As FDA Regulatory Pioneer

Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA medical officer credited with stopping the approval of thalidomide in the United States in one of the first projects she worked on after starting at the agency in 1960, died Aug. 7 at age 101, leaving a legacy as a regulatory pioneer whose work helped set the current “gold standard” for drug approvals. Kelsey has long been honored and hailed for her regulatory and scientific contributions -- her work on thalidomide led to passage of...