A Year To Remember For FDA Head; Or Was It A Year To Forget?; Acting chief Crawford says the agency has "come around," but issues remain.(HEALTH & MEDICINE)(Q & A)

Byline: PETER BENESH

It's been a rough year for the Food and Drug Administration. Trouble came in bunches.

Critics said it was slow to act on Vioxx, which Merck pulled from the market before the FDA finished its own inquiry.

The FDA took more criticism over links between antidepressants and child suicides. And it came under fire when contamination at a U.K. plant wiped out the main U.S. source of flu vaccine.

The news didn't get any better late last month, when a study linked Pfizer's Celebrex painkiller to heart risks. That announcement was followed by the news that FDA officials have raised questions about the potential for similar problems with Aleve, a painkiller made by Germany's Bayer AG.

Throughout these debacles, more Americans waged personal war on high drug prices by ordering U.S.-made drugs from Canada despite FDA claims that reimported drugs may be unsafe.

The man at the top of the FDA is acting Commissioner Lester Crawford, a veterinarian and pharmacologist. He recently spoke to IBD, though the conversation took place before the Celebrex news came out. Crawford did not respond to requests for further comment.