Mary Pazdur's battle with cancer was a factor in Pazdur's willingness to swiftly approve risky new treatments and passion to fight the disease that patient advocates thought he lacked Mary Pazdur had exhausted the usual drugs for ovarian cancer, and with her tumors growing and her condition deteriorating, her last hope seemed to be an experimental compound that had yet to be approved by federal regulators. So she appealed to the Food and Drug Administration, whose oncology chief for the last 16 years, Richard Pazdur, has been a man denounced by many cancer patient advocates as a ...