Martin Heinrich: “The determination about whether drugs are safe and effective needs to be left to the experts at FDA, not politicians and…”

In the short term, what I'd really like to see is a hand-in-glove approach between Russia and the World Health Organization. That would tell us a lot.

Our whole premise as we approached this permitting bill was: How do we create a faster process, not lower the bar on standards.

It was not easy. It took longer than we would like, but everyone was committed to getting there.

And some of the secret sauce in this was just the fact that we had four people who were genuinely committed to a balanced package that both sides could support.