David A. Kessler is now Dean of Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06510. His direct phone number or email address is not available. Directory assistance is (203)432-4771.

David Kessler was forced to resign from the FDA. The following was found on the internet:
Kessler’s Legacy to the FDA

by Steven Wm. Fowkes

If you haven’t already heard, David Kessler is resigning as Commissioner of the FDA. Sadly, it isn’t because the FDA is now back on track and his job is done. It’s because of scandal. David Kessler was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It seems Congressional investigations are now pending.

Is Kessler being investigated for illegal expenditure of millions of dollars of FDA resources from the budget of the Commissioner’s Office for a pet project that did not have Congressional approval? No. It seems that David Kessler may have billed the Government for hotel expenses he never made and cab rides for which he had no receipts. When AP reporters closely examined his cab expense claims, they found that he had billed $28 for cab rides from LaGuardia Airport to two nearby New York hotels, a ride which costs no more than $8 according to hotel management (not to mention the "free" airport shuttle service that both hotels provide). It now appears that more than 50

of his trips from his suburban home to the National Airport were overbilled by at least $5 and more likely by $10 apiece. What is the total amount of this "cabgate" scandal? $5,000." 

Dr. Kessler's book, "A Question of Intent : A Great American Battle With A Deadly Industry" was recently published. His recent TV appearances are to publicize this book.

The following was found on Amazon.com:

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This is the David-and-Goliath story of how an American bureaucrat took on the tobacco industry--and helped topple it. David Kessler, head of the Food and Drug Administration for seven years under Presidents Bush and Clinton, earned the nickname "Eliot Knessler" from The Washington Post--a pun meant to evoke the memory of the Prohibition-era gangbuster--because he rejuvenated a moribund agency. The FDA regulated, in Kessler's words, "one quarter of every dollar Americans spent--from the food they eat to the drugs they take to the cosmetics they wear." Yet it lacked the courage to take on the country's most lethal product: cigarettes. So did Kessler, at least

initially. He agreed with aides and others that Big Tobacco was too powerful a force in Washington, D.C. "The industry perceived threats everywhere, and responded to them ferociously," he writes. Moreover, challenging the industry would waste important resources that could have a more tangible benefit for consumers if they were spent elsewhere. Even before making the choice to go after cigarettes, Kessler was a figure of controversy, and this only intensified when he became one of the few Republican holdovers in the Clinton administration. Much of the book deals with the routine business of the FDA: orange-juice seizures, a fight to restrict the sale of body tissues from foreign sources, how he responded to complaints that syringes were found in Pepsi

cans, and so on. But the driving force behind Kessler's narrative is how he slowly woke up to the possibility of regulating cigarettes. "It is too easy to be swayed by the argument that tobacco is a legal product and should be treated like any other," he writes. "A product that kills people--when used as intended--is different. No one should be allowed to make a profit from that." His story is a lesson in Washington power politics--a game he played with naiveté when he started but was expert at by the end of his tenure.

To say Kessler and his team of FDA regulators "defeated" Big Tobacco is an overstatement: they were part of a broader effort that included trial lawyers, consumer groups, and crusading journalists, and the industry hasn't exactly gone away. But they were instrumental in forcing tobacco companies to admit that nicotine is addictive and cigarettes cause cancer, and in bringing about a sea change in the industry's legal and popular standing. Kessler now believes in regulation so tight it will strangle Big Tobacco forever: "If our goal is to halt this manmade epidemic," he writes, "the tobacco industry, as currently configured, needs to be dismantled." A Question of Intent is a well-told muckraker. It unfolds deliberately, like a good detective story. Admirers of Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action, especially those with a taste for public policy, won't be disappointed. --John J. Miller