Before becoming FDA commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary pushed for more advisory committee meetings. Kent Nishimura/Reuters

FDA leaders under President Donald Trump are moving to abandon a decades-old policy of asking outside experts to review drug applications, a move critics say would shield the agency’s decisions from public scrutiny.

The agency “would like to get away” from assembling panels of experts to examine and vote on individual drugs, because “I don’t think they’re needed,” said George Tidmarsh, head of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. He relayed the message Tuesday at a meeting of health care product makers and Wednesday to an FDA advocacy group.

In addition to being redundant, Tidmarsh said, advisory meetings on specific drugs were “a tremendous amount of wo

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