Big Pharma giant Pfizer announced last month that psychiatrist Patrizia Cavazzoni is joining their company – again – as Chief Medical Officer. She’ll be in charge of Pfizer’s regulatory, pharmaco-vigilance, and drug safety operations for a reported salary of $500,000 per year, excluding bonuses.

     She’s just resigned from her position as the Food and Drug Administration as the head of their Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. It has 5,000 employees and a budget exceeding $1 billion. While serving in that role, she was the highest paid employee of the FDA, earning $400,000 per year.

     There were no bonuses for her there, unless you take into account the junkets and advisory positions she was rewarded with during her FDA tenure. Her net worth today is estimated between $6 and $17 million.

     Prior to the FDA position, she was also employed by Pfizer in a series of vice president positions. In one of them she advised on a lawsuit alleging that Pfizer downplayed the risks of birth defects associated with the depression drug Zoloft. Pfizer settled that suit for $2.3 billion, which included a record breaking criminal fine of $1.3 billion.

     Before Pfizer, she was a director of surveillance and epidemiology at Eli Lilly, and there too she helped with a lawsuit, this one over their antipsychotic drug Zyprexa. Lilly ended up paying out $500 million to settle those lawsuits.

     Before that Cavazzoni was an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa and published numerous academic and industry articles on, of all things, antipsychotic medications. She’d originally earned her medical degree as a  psychiatrist from McGill University.

     Cavazzoni resigned from the FDA in January this year, just before Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. took office as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, which regulates the FDA. She was not alone in jumping the lucrative FDA ship, given Kennedy’s accusation that the FDA has been too influenced by Big Pharma interests. He noted that nearly two-thirds of the FDA’s funding comes from the pharmaceutical companies it regulates, and he often has pointed at the inappropriate “revolving door” of employment between pharmaceutical companies and government health agencies.

     Back again at Pfizer, fresh from the FDA, Cavazzoni is again an example of a high paid psychiatrist passing through that revolving door.

     Do pass Go. Do collect two hundred dollars. Or more.

     While in charge of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Cavazzoni came under heavy criticism in 2021 for approving Biogen’s new Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm despite there being one incomplete, barely positive study of the drug, followed by an equally negative second study. In effect, Carazzoni’s approval of Aduhlem overruled the FDA
scientists and the FDA Advisory Committee of Alzheimer experts who all had argued that Aduhlem did not lead to clinical benefits, nor was it safe enough for FDA approval.

     A 2021 Forbes article by Dr. David Gortler labeled her approval of the Biogen drug “Unforgivable Hypocrisy.”

     Even if Aduhelm showed no signs of being effective, the drug did fit conveniently into the Biden administration’s campaign pledge to defeat Alzheimer’s. Cavazzoni was, in fact, promoted to her position as head of the CDER at the FDA by Biden, and Biden himself has been the top political benefactor of Big Pharma PAC contributions, at a total of $1 million.

     He too had apparently passed GO, and, like Cavazzoni, collected more than two hundred dollars.

     In her January 18, 2025 resignation letter, Cavazzoni wrote, “Leaving CDER was an extremely difficult decision, but the time has come for me to be more present for my family, who have taken the back seat over the past few years due to the demands of my role.”

     Now, barely one month later, she is the new Chief Medical Officer for Pfizer. Family again takes a back seat, apparently, while Patricia takes another lap around the lucrative Big Pharma/FDA monopoly board.