Cotton introduces bill to prohibit Iranian nationals from working at FDA

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) recently introduced legislation that would bar the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from employing individuals with ties to “adversarial foreign” nations, specifically China, Russia and Iran, the legislator’s office announced on Monday.

“The oversight of our food and medicine is too important to allow corruption from adversarial foreign nationals,” Cotton said. “My bill will establish safeguards at FDA to protect Americans’ health and intellectual property.”

Specifically, the American Medicine Safety and Security Act would prohibit the FDA from employing Chinese, Russian and Iranian nationals and require current and future FDA employees to report whether any of their family members are from those countries.

The bill would also restrict employees from acc