Pure Food and Drug Act
The 1906 Act paved the way for the eventual creation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is generally considered to be that agency's founding date, though the agency existed before the law was passed and was not named FDA until later. "While the Food and Drug act remains a foundational law of the FDA mission, it's not the law that created the FDA. [Initially,] the Bureau of Chemistry (the precursor to the FDA) regulated food safety. In 1927, the Bureau was reorganized into the Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration and the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils. The FDIA was renamed the FDA in 1930."
Food and Drug Administration
Concerns about the length of the drug approval process were brought to the fore early in the AIDS epidemic. In the mid- and late 1980s, ACT-UP and other HIV activist organizations accused the FDA of unnecessarily delaying the approval of medications to fight HIV and opportunistic infections. Partly in response to these criticisms, the FDA issued new rules to expedite approval of drugs for life-threatening diseases, and expanded pre-approval access to drugs for patients with limited treatment options. All of the initial drugs approved for the treatment of HIV/AIDS were approved through these accelerated approval mechanisms. Frank Young, the commissioner of the FDA was behind the Action Plan Phase II, established in August 1987 for quicker approval of AIDS medication.