The Republican appointee to the Women’s Health division of the FDA resigned, in large part, over the agency’s (mis)handling of the Plan B birth control/contraception pill, saying religion should not trump science within the FDA. Plan B is the marketed name for a so-called “morning after” pill that is approved for over the counter sale in Canada and across Europe. In America, a cabal of ultraconservatives who believe the pill is “murder” took the FDA political appointees by the ears and squelched the approval of the pill that had been recommended by all the scientists and outside review committees. In this case, the politicians didn’t even wait for the science reviews to be completed. Four months before the reports were issued by the scientists, the head of FDA let it be known that the pill would not receive approval. The pill is effective only within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Most women, I’m told, feel like hell for a day or so after taking the pill, but there are few dire side effects. Just as in the “intelligent design” imbroligo, this is another case of western rationalism vs. the occult thinking of a relatively small number of evangelical fundamentalists who are intent on impressing their religious beliefs on the rest of the world. Jihadists in our midst, to my mind.
It seems to me the question, the essential issue that faces America is often misstated. The essential policy question as far as politics goes is whether government will be rational, as our Enlightenment forefathers expected. What should be the role of government in our lives? Should government enact policies based on the best available facts and let the moral debate rage as it will or should government get into the business of deciding policy based upon the morality of the majority to the detriment of the minority? Do we want the government to, in effect, put a policeman in the examination rooms of OB-GYN physicians to enforce a religious belief, no matter how widely held?
As the original conservative, Edmund Burke wrote: Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. The same goes for women, sisters. You will take action or pay the consequences by default.
WASHINGTON – Federal drug regulators compromised their usual science-based decision-making process when they ruled in 2004 against letting the morning-after birth control pill be sold without a prescription, congressional investigators said Monday.
A report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office bolstered critics’ charges that the Food and Drug Administration had yielded to political pressure from social conservatives, who feared that easier access to the drug would encourage promiscuity.
In an examination of the agency’s May 2004 decision, the GAO found that “four aspects of (the) review process were unusual” and that the entire decision-making process was “not typical” when compared to how similar cases have been handled.
The contraceptive, manufactured by Barr Laboratories and marketed as Plan B, contains a higher dose of a hormone in regular birth-control pills. It should be taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Plan B has been available by prescription since 1999, but a decision on over-the-counter sales remains in regulatory limbo after another round of delays this year by the FDA.
“GAO’s final report describes an appalling level of manipulation and suppression of the science,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who requested the inquiry. “It appears that the decision was preordained from the outset.”