William Beaver, groundbreaking painkiller researcher who drafted the initial rules for FDA clinical drug trials, dies of covid complications Spencer Hsu William T. Beaver, a medical educator and researcher who helped establish a scientific basis for the use of painkilling drugs from aspirin to morphine and later chaired a federal panel on the medical use of marijuana, died of complications from covid-19 on Nov. 12 at a care facility near his longtime home in Waterford, Va., his family said. He was 87. Beaver was the clinical pharmacologist at Georgetown University who is credited with drafting the initial federal regulations defining “adequate and controlled” clinical studies, according to a 2008 history of clinical trials and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.