Mr. Trump has been vetting candidates to run the agency, which regulates the safety of everything from drugs and medical devices to food and cosmetics. Among them is Jim O’Neill, a former official at the Health and Human Services Department who is an associate of the Silicon Valley billionaire and Trump supporter Peter Thiel. Mr. O’Neill has argued that companies should not have to prove that their drugs work in clinical trials before selling them to consumers.

Other candidates also have called for reducing regulatory hurdles.

If the most significant proposals are adopted — and many would require an act of Congress — they will reverse decades of policy and consumer protections dating to the 1960s. Congress toughened the drug approval process in the wake of the worldwide crisis over thalidomide, which caused severe birth defects in babies whose mothers had taken the drug in pregnancy. Since then, the F.D.A. has come to be viewed as the world’s leading watchdog for protecting the safety of food and drugs, a gold standard whose lead other countries often follow.

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Image: By The U.S. Food and Drug Administration – FDA Sign & Bldg 21 at Entrance, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33627854

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