A new group called the Coalition for a Stronger FDA -- co-chaired by former HHS secretaries Tommy Thompson, Donna Shalala and Louis Sullivan -- on Monday launched a lobbying effort to increase funding for FDA, CongressDaily reports (CongressDaily, 9/25). At a press conference, Thompson said he plans to meet with the director of the Office of Management and Budget to discuss FDA funding for fiscal year 2008. If an agreement is not reached with the White House, the group plans to lobby Congress for more funding (Henderson, Boston Globe, 9/26). Coalition members include the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the Advanced Medical Technology Association, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Seventeen patients' groups are also members, including the American Heart Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the Alzheimer's Association. Thompson said budgets for NIH and CDC have doubled in recent years as FDA's budget has lagged. He said large investments at NIH are expected to lead to the development of new products and technologies that will require FDA approval. Unless FDA funding is increased, a bottleneck for patient access to new treatments could emerge, Thompson said. He added that the coalition does not plan to lobby for an "exact dollar amount." He said, "We realize that it's going to take a nice sizable increase" (Reichard, CQ HealthBeat, 9/25). William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner and an advisor to the coalition, said that doubling FDA's current $1.5 billion budget would pay for itself if it led to life-saving drugs being approved one year sooner or averted a public health incident such as the recent E. coli cases linked to contaminated spinach (Boston Globe, 9/26). CSPI Executive Vice President Michael Jacobson said FDA's "food division is particularly vulnerable to budget cuts because it is not bolstered by user fee laws." Jacobson said that the increasingly complex food products on the market "have stretched [FDA's] staff beyond the breaking point" (CQ HealthBeat, 9/25).