Susan F. Wood, a biologist and veteran of 15 years in professional positions on Capitol Hill and in two administrations, took the unusual step of publicly announcing her resignation in an e-mail to friends and colleagues that was distributed to the media by a policy group that favors reproductive choice.
“I can no longer serve . . . when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled,” wrote Wood, 46, who has been at the agency nearly five years and held the title of assistant commissioner.
It’s almost forty-four years since the arrest of birth control providers — which led to the Supreme Court decision legalizing contraception in this land. The amalgamation of religious fanatics and political opportunists is dedicated to turning back the clock.
Plan B, made by Barr Laboratories, won FDA approval as a prescription drug in 1999. Its path to over-the-counter designation has been convoluted.
Last year, the FDA overruled an advisory panel recommendation and decided to keep Plan B as a prescription drug. But the agency invited Barr to re-apply after submitting additional data, and the company asked that the drug be made freely available to women 16 and older while younger girls would need a prescription. The FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research has determined that the product can be safely sold without a prescription to women 17 and older.
Most Americans are still ignorant of the whole agenda of the fundamentalist Phalange. The plan to take our society back to the Dark Ages ranges from “creationism” to outlawing contraceptive products. They would have superstition overrule science at every turn.
People were saying RU-486 is unsafe when it was in the approval process, but the idelogues pushed it through, and now people are dying from using it. Somehow it’s ok for the FDa to go superslow in approving important drugs in every case but this.
They aren’t stopping with relitigating birth control and abortion cases. They are already challenging Scopes, and Copernicus had best be watching his back
I honestly think that no male of the species should be allowed to give input on birth control, abortion, or anything related to them. Most of the anti-choice and pro-choice males are only there hoping to meet women. The only ones that are not are the fringe level right and left wing freaks.
Either way, lame dudes trying to score or nut cases means they should not have an input. The fact that a medically safe drug is being withheld by politics based on religion is sickening. I am Christian but I would never expect anyone else to have the same values I possess, anyone who bases secular decisions on religious grounds is a bad Christian who is incapable of reading their own Bible. I guess that is why true fools like Robertson are able to gather large crowds of the “ignoransia”.
I saw a political cartoon that made me laugh, but also made me say: “YEAH!”
It basically said that if high schools and college’s have to teach ID as an alternative to evolution, then evolution should be “tought/preached/what ever they do there” in the church!
Man do I agree with that one!
I cannot believe the political climate in the States right now, eg:
“A conservative group issued a news release applauding her resignation. “Thank goodness, there is now one less political activist at the FDA who puts radical feminist ideology above women’s health,” said Wendy Wright, policy director for Concerned Women for America.”
Radical feminist ideaology above health? The plan B pill has absolutely everything to do with women’s health. It is a safe drug as has been proven by the many years it has been available in Europe. And if you think getting pregnant isn’t a health issue you’re brain-dead. And yes, heaven forbid women be able to take control of their health without going to a doctor (read: man) first.
I strongly suspect if this woman was really a political activist with some agenda she would have stayed in her position – not left it.
And while it is true a delay is not a decision, some people can read the writing on the wall. While I think it is sad that this woman would leave her position (it would be nice to make changes from within) it is brave of her to do so. She is following her conscience and her honor, which is something Capitol Hill needs more of.
I don’t think it is superstitious to value life from womb to tomb. It might be useful for parents and teens to take some freakin responsibility – carry the child to term, and put it up for adoption. If the case of rape or incest isn’t there, why does this issue always have to be spun as an invasion of the 3-headed religious? Show some blasted compassion and this society might actually get somewhere!
another example of some factions of the government putting their nose..where it doesn’t belong…. literally!
Back alley abortions coming soon to a suburb near you.
I do not argue the perspective of either side anymore, but we have already tried and failed in one respect; why are we revisiting it? The definition of insanity rears it’s head again… or the ‘Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ needs to be reinterated.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something HIGHLY unpopular. The Left is adverse to science as much as the Right.
People tend to think that the Right is more adverse to science due to religious nuts like W. But it’s a simple fact that BOTH parties have agendas. And furthermore, and this is THE important part, NEITHER party will change agendas based the findings of science. (Unless you included public opinion polls as science, of course.)
If a study is released refuting the Left’s agenda, it’ll get ignored by the Left just as easily as it would by the Right, the situations being reversed.
AB CD – where’s your proof on RU-486. Any documents/links you’d like to reference? Please no “O’Reilly said so” answers.
Until you do – your statement is nonsense.
Maybe AB CD was talking about this:
http://www.detnews.com/2005/health/0508/27/A07-287855.htm
Not proved yet, but not a good sign, either.
I waded through a lot of anti-abortion website results to find this story. (Shouldn’t they just blog this stuff, and point to reputable, “unbiased” sources? Their advocacy just clogs up the search results. Or is it the right-wing bloggers’ linking to the anti-abortion sites that bumps up their Google PageRank and clogs the top of my search. Aaaaah.)
This quote caught my eye:
> At the heart of the inquiry are why and how the deadly infections developed and whether more women might have been harmed.
> “That’s something we don’t have an explanation for right now,” said Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ima, I wouldn’t say, “unpopular” — probably just ignorant.
If and when we graft a forum onto this site, I’d be pleased to ask some basic questions about sources, who do you consider to be a legitimate spokesperson for what you call “the Left”. Although I often subscribe to the “plague on both your houses” theory, the street those houses are built on extends from portions of the Right over to a lot of Centrists who think they’re Liberal — and rarely Progressive. They’re often linked by their common superstitions — and reliance on those superstitions.
I know a number of traditional Conservatives — and many more secular Progressives who couch their search for reason and progress in science. If you’d like, I’ll suggest a few places to look. If that doesn’t affront your preconceptions.
But, that’s one of the things a proper forum is for.
Well said Ima Fish. To the Left, it’s only stepping out of bounds if it fails to push the Lefts viewpoints.
Hey..I heard that!
Ed Campbell, show me one example of the Left (or the Right) changing a core agenda because of scientific data. Just one. If one party IS more favorable to science, it shouldn’t be too hard.
AB
There is a higher chance of dying in CHILDBIRTH than from RU-486!
Let’s face it, childbirth is NOT exactly safe. Maternal death rates hover between 4 and 7 per 100,000. (Slightly higher for teenaged mothers.)
This isn’t RU-486, it’s a morning after pill…like a high dose of birth control pills…that just change the surface of the womb so implantation doesn’t take place. (The fertilized egg doesn’t implant until day 3 or 4, as it is usually fertilied in the fallopian tubes…and then slowly drifts down to the womb). Many, many potential pregnancies fail to implant for a variety of reasons. The Plan B just gives another reason. It’s mortality rate is 1 in 100,000. Walking across the street in a crosswalk has a much higher risk.
Get your contraceptive programs straight, AB…or at least don’t have sex without double wrapping your boy-part in multiple condoms and duct-tape. If you don’t understand human conception and family planning you should NOT be risking reproduction.
4 deaths – even if they are linked in 460,000 doses – doesn’t even come close to the maternal death rate of 1 in 2,800 in the most developed countries WHO Table
According to my read RU-486 is very safe.
Safer for the mothers perhaps, but deadly for the kids.
See, to some of us, science cleared up a part of this. If a being has 100% duck DNA, it’s a duck. If it has 100% dog DNA, it’s a dog. If a being has 100% human DNA, it’s a human being.
That the reproductive tract does not work as quick as a Xerox(TM) copier is irrelevant.
Rick – I didn’t know kids were taking RU486. Are that many pregnant and wanting to abort their fetuses?
Ima — I expect as little of either of the two institutional parties in this land as you probably do. And, forgive me if this is a misperception; but, you often sound as if you don’t think the rest of the world is worth noticing.
In any case, do your own Googling. It’s not part of my job description. If you do, you should find several American political figures in recent years who did exactly what you deny — and not to the benefit especially of their political careers. The first to come to mind would be Dr. Koop who walked away from the politicos over the whole range of issues from birth control to smoking. The doctor in this particular post being a more recent example.
There have been numerous folks on the Left and Right who have disagreed and countered the official line of their parties over stem cell research. If this hasn’t yet coalesced into a political party — well, gee, I didn’t know it meant so much to you. Is that a requirement for you to get involved in either the defense of science or active opposition to opportunist politicians?
If you care to get involved with scientists and humanists who care deeply about changing the way this society functions, about the way the world might be redirected — I’ll bet you’re thoroughly capable of finding such organizations. No one else need point them out to you.
I.F. OK. Supper is started and I can sit still for more than a 45-second response.
Let me give you just a single example of how science affected politicians and political struggle in the nation. The case of Brown v. Board of Education was the foundation for the proof of individual harm done by segregation. The work of many different kinds of social scientists produced the core of what had to be considered by the several level of jurists involved.
For specifics, look to the Library of Congress 50th Anniversary statements: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-brown.html
The resulting decision was taken to heart by many Democrats, leadership and rank-and-file. It caused the eventual split of “Dixiecrats” from that party over the issue of racism — and into the welcoming arms of Nixon and the Republican Party where they have lived happily ever after.
Social and political movements through every layer of society participated in that struggle in that era; but, the foundation that was used to spread the word — wasn’t just that Americans are good-hearted people and will realize the errors of the past.
Further back, the same struggles against inequity — and the same reliance on science served to bring suffrage to women voters. I don’t doubt the reasoned expansion of genetic understanding will serve the Gay and Lesbian community of our land, as well.
That one took a little longer. Maybe four minutes. I still haven’t noticed anywhere in either the article or my statements where your premise arose that I might think Democrats and Republicans are going to volunteer to adopt science as a political standard. My essential hope is that [1] they’ll get out of the way, more often; and [2] hopefully, won’t legislate us all the way back to the Dark Ages from sheer opportunism.
Rick,
So your talking about DNA being the most important least common denominator of human life? So, now we have to write up laws to protect human DNA from destruction? Does this mean you want everyone to protect blood and tissue samples as though it were a living human being because they have 100% human DNA?
I love how these anti-abortionists love to bastardize and convolute science to fit into their narrow agendas.
That’s also enough time wasted on a non sequitur.