Paul A. Offit, M.D., is a rare medical academic. A pediatrician and a central figure in child vaccination policy, he also has an outstanding record in vaccine research and development (including work on the recently approved Gardasil vaccine for cervical cancer). His latest book, Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat...

"Off-label" prescribing--that is, doctors prescribing drugs for purposes other than those expressly approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA--is often useful although little is known of its extent. In the last several years, nearly every major pharmaceutical company has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle allegations of...

With the fates of the Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical industry more intertwined than ever, our health depends on regulatory innovation as much as on scientific progress.