Susan F. Wood, a former official with the Food and Drug Administration, writes in a guest column in this morning's Washington Post about a disturbing pattern during the Bush administration during "which our federal health agencies seem increasingly unable to operate independently and that this lack of independence compromises their mission of promoting public health and welfare."
An example of where politics has trumped science and good health, according to Wood, is the FDA's refusal to let the emergency contraceptive known as Plan B be available to women 17 or older over the counter. Plan B, which can prevent a pregnancy after unprotected sex, is available only by prescription. (The manufacturer addressed earlier concerns about possible abuse by juvenile girls by agreeing to limit OTC access to adults.)
For three years, the question of OTC access for Plan B has been before the FDA, and for three years, it's been one bureaucratic stall after another. Meanwhile, how many unborn lives have been lost to abortions performed because women did not have the Plan B option to prevent pregnancy?
Some who are opposed to abortion, including readers who commented on my previous post on this topic, suggest Plan B is an abortion by another, more antiseptic name.
Not true, writes Wood:
(T)he only connection this pill has with abortion is that it has the potential to prevent the need for one. Emergency contraceptive pills work exactly the same way as other birth control pills, and they do not interfere with or harm an existing pregnancy. Emergency contraception is simply a higher dose of daily birth control pills; it is not RU-486, the "abortion pill." Indeed, emergency contraception has been used as a method to prevent unintended pregnancies for decades by women who had physicians advise them on how many pills in their regular pill pack to take. So people who are comfortable with oral contraceptives as methods of contraception should be just as comfortable with emergency contraception.
The best government is one that is run competently, in which decisions are made in the best interests of the governed. On matters of health and science, that means relying on the best available objective evidence, and not on subjective notions of morality held by this or that political group. Too often, as on Plan B, the Bush administration has allowed politics, and not science, to guide its decision-making.
Wood concludes:
It's been nearly three years since the first application came in to make Plan B emergency contraception available over the counter, so that women, including rape victims, could have a second chance to prevent an unintended pregnancy and the need for an abortion. How many chances have we missed? I still can't explain what is going on here, and why women 17 and older are still denied this product in a timely way. When did adult access to contraception become controversial? And why have we allowed it to happen?
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