Plan B, as some of you may know, has nothing to do with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria or Lebanon. What it does have to do with is the Food and Drug Administration, and the agency’s decision to reject over the counter sales of morning after contraception pills before FDA’s scientists had even finished their review:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The decision whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should approve wider access to a morning-after contraceptive drug was made well before agency scientists finished their final review, two FDA officials said in court documents released on Thursday.
Supporters of over-the-counter sales for Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Plan B pills have accused top FDA officials of hindering the company’s bid for nonprescription sales for years, to please conservative supporters of President George W. Bush’s administration.
The documents come just days after the FDA said it would reopen discussions over the drug, which can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse. The delay had stirred debate over politics and science and held up the confirmation of two agency chiefs.
In a sworn statement in June, Dr. John Jenkins, director of the FDA’s Office of New Drugs, said he learned in early 2004 that then-FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan had decided against approval before the staff could complete their analysis. […]
Another FDA official, who evaluated Plan B, alluded to White House involvement in a deposition given last month.
Dr. Florence Houn said she was also told that in January by Deputy Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock that Plan B needed to be rejected “to appease the administration’s constituents” but that it could be approved later.
Gee, who could have imagined that a radical right wing Republican administration would have interfered with the FDA’s evaluation of a contraceptive medicine already widely in use around the world just to appease their fundamentalist christian supporters?
Cont.
After all, it’s not like anyone could have predicted arguments against contraception like these would have any impact on the FDA’s independent review:
Opponents say easier access to Plan B will spur promiscuity. Some equate the drug with an abortion pill, although the FDA says it is a contraceptive.
Josh gee whillikers! How could this ever happen in America?
Along with MANY other women who followed this fiasco when it was going on, I ran around flapping my old wings like a completely crazed canary in a coal mine, tyring to alert younger women (and men) about what was going on here, in terms of the fundamentalists gaining incredible power at all levels of government. More often that not, I ran into accusations of being “over reactive”, “over emotional”, “out of touch with how things are NOW”, a “womens studies single issue” loser, and lots flat out amused denial, “Thats stuff could NEVER happen NOW!”, when I’d acuterly described my own past as a woman living under totaly fundanentalist “rule”. (That’s probasbly the longest sentence I’ve ever written.)
Well, there is it, ladies and gentlemen, flat out proof of what they can and will do,in their march to put women back to being barefoot and pregnant, and totally dependent on males once again, as it SHOULD BE!! (in their preferred world)
It is really not too wise to ignore any frantically squawking canary in a coal mine, no matter how damned old they may be.
Oh, and for any guys who may be passing through here, (because I know the regular pond guys aren’t like this at all), who may think this barefoot and pregant thing might be a pretty good deal for them, believe me, it’s not. (Unless of course, you’ve got a thing for stepford type women who can smile up a storm at you while triple-starching your boxers, and yes, that is a confession.)
don’t the stepford types just wind up schtupping the pool-guy anyway? 😉
I’m sure many do. What I was taught as a teen was that a wife was to simply submit to the unpleasant duty of sex any time, any place, and in any way in he wanted it. I was advised to hink of something else while it is going on, to pretend to enjoy it for his sake. To get through it without making him mad or dissapointing him. To do my “duty” as a good Christian wife and “helpmeet” and to accept and remember that men can’t help being how they are as far as sex is concerned.
Ugh.
i fixed a couple of broken tags for you Steven.
Bush’s veto of stem cell research (his only veto in 6 years) was the real kicker. Even Orrin Hatch supports stem cell research.
The issue here is not really Plan B. There may be some rational/scientific arguements against it (not persuasive in the least, but argument have been made). The outrage is that a supposedly independent agency that exists to make life-and-death decisions about our medicine and foods has been subverted into a mouthpiece for a minority of superstitious cultists. They can’t make their case even in a Republican Congress so they simply destroy the credibility of one of America’s most vital regulatory bodies. The consequences will be felt long after the Plan B controversy is relegated to the “Believe it or not” sidebar in the history books.
Last I heard, subverting an independent agency of the US government without approval by Congress meets the test for treason.
If you control the government, none dare call it treason. That’s reserved for the likes of you and I who dare to point out the truth.
I doubt any government agency in existance has not been sold off, bit by bit, to the highest bidder or whoever has the clout to corrupt it for thier own ends. Which works out quite well for an adminstration that considers itself immune to cnsequences of breaking any law, and if caught, can simply change law to make any chosen behavior legal.
Oh, and I beleive, for most women, the primary issue here really IS the ability to prevent an unwanted pregnancy that will alter our entire existance, and our basic human right to have the same sovereign control over our bodies than men have.