WASHINGTON — Top drug regulator George Tidmarsh assured Food and Drug Administration staff this week that he and other leaders are trying to bring operations back to normal.

“I know that I’m coming in here at a challenging time,” Tidmarsh said at a town hall meeting on Friday with the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research staff. “That is not lost on me.”

STAT obtained recordings of Friday’s CDER staff meeting, and of another meeting last week with CDER’s Office of New Drugs. In those meetings, FDA employees pushed for answers on whether the agency would restore funding for research fellows, when they will be allowed to easily attend conferences again, and why FDA’s leaders are holding ad-hoc panels instead of advisory committee meetings with experts whose conflicts of interest are clea

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