Did you select George Bush to be your doctor?
Dr. Bush has become America's de facto physician-in-chief.
Dr. Bush is a card-carrying misogynist. I certainly didn't chose him.
Actually it's even worse. The Republican extremists running our country have teamed up with the likes of: Dr. Jerry Falwell, the Focus on the Family lunatics, Dr. Bill Frist, that sick shit, Dr. Tom Coburn (this guy is the true face of evil), and others equally deranged to dictate and shape your health care and mine.
Did you know that scary organizations like the Christian Medical and Dental Association, aid and abet our government? You can read about these crazies here:
http://www.cmdahome.org/
So what's the outrage du jour? It's really something.
Today it's about Plan B also known as the "morning after pill". It should be widely available, the FDA should approve over-the-counter sales. But this may not happen because the FDA has been co-oped by the Right Wing running our government.
Here's the background.
The controversy began in 2003 when Barr Laboratories applied to switch Plan B from prescription to over-the-counter status. Women's health advocates contend that easier access to the medicine will reduce unwanted pregnancies. But anti-abortion activists say that Plan B, by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg, is equivalent to an abortion.
In December 2003, an FDA advisory committee voted 23-4 to approve Barr's application with no age restrictions. The agency's scientific staff supported approval, but in May 2004 a top agency official overruled them and rejected the application, citing concerns about the pill's use by young teenagers.
There are new revelations in the Los Angeles Times this morning (FDA's Role in Blocking 'Morning-After' Pill Cited), about the Food and Drug Administration and how it has become a fully politicized arm of the Republican National Committee. Medical decisions have become political decisions!
The last two appointees to head the FDA were closely involved in decisions to overrule the agency's medical reviewers and block the "morning-after" birth control pill from being sold without a prescription, according to court transcripts to be released today.
Last year, Lester M. Crawford personally took the decision away from his top subordinates, according to depositions of two senior Food and Drug Administration officials. And at an earlier stage in the process, his immediate predecessor as FDA commissioner, Mark B. McClellan, raised objections that formed the basis for overruling medical reviewers.
http://www.latimes.com/...
Anti-health, anti-science, anti-female.
The transcripts provide the most detailed look yet at an internal review that some critics say has been tainted by politics. The dispute over the drug, marketed as Plan B, has pitted Christian conservatives against liberal women's groups and raised concerns in academic circles that the FDA had compromised its scientific principles.
A judge has ruled that Dr. Crawford, D.V.M., Ph.D., (a veternarian), will have to testify. Keep in mind Dr. Crawford resigned under a cloud and is now under criminal investigation.
Former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford is under criminal investigation by a federal grand jury over allegations of financial improprieties and false statements to Congress, his lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder, said Friday, the New York Times reports (Harris, New York Times, 4/29). Crawford left FDA in September 2005, two months after his Senate confirmation, saying it was time for someone else to lead the agency. According to financial disclosure forms, Crawford or his wife held shares in several companies whose business is regulated by FDA as late as 2004, when Crawford was FDA's acting commissioner. The HHS Office of Inspector General confirmed in October 2005 that it had launched an investigation into Crawford's departure (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 10/26/05).
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/...
But Crawford will finally get his day in court whether he likes it or not.
Similar lawsuits have been dismissed in the past, but a federal judge in New York has allowed this one to proceed.
Crawford was scheduled to give a deposition in the case Wednesday. McClellan is to be deposed next month.
As the FDA's top political appointee, the commissioner sets broad policies and rarely casts the deciding vote on such narrow issues as switching a drug from prescription to over-the-counter status. The Government Accountability Office, in a report, has called the agency's handling of the case unusual.
Politics trumps science with dire consequences for all of us. This next quote is rather breathtaking.
According to the FDA officials' testimony in their depositions, Crawford took control of the Plan B review early in 2005, after it became evident that senior FDA staff members were going to recommend that women 17 and older be allowed to obtain the drug without a prescription. Crawford shut top managers out of the process and in August announced an indefinite postponement of the decision.
"Dr. Crawford ... told me that he was concerned about where we were heading because he knew that I was heading toward this recommendation, and he told me that he was going to make the decision on what to do with the application," Dr. Steven Galson, head of the FDA division that reviews drugs, testified.
Galson testified that never before had such a decision been taken away from him.
Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDA's deputy commissioner for operations, testified that Crawford gave her about a day's notice of his August announcement. As a top-ranking official, Woodcock was accustomed to being consulted by the commissioner on key matters. But Crawford "was ... going to take this decision himself, and that's what he told me," she testified.
Doctors are outraged. We all should be.
In an interview, the head of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale University's medical school, Dr. Charles J. Lockwood, called Crawford's actions "amazing" and "sad."
"This provides illumination on what has long been suspected, that political -- rather than scientific or health -- concerns drove the decision by the commissioner," said Lockwood, who serves as an outside advisor to the FDA. "It sets an ominous precedent for political and potentially theological control over scientific [entities]."
The FDA has also taken a heavily politicized stand on the medical benefits of marijuana use:
On April 20, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released an advisory that claimed that smoking marijuana served no legitimate medical purpose. In yet another instance of politics trumping science in the Bush administration, the advisory cited no new scientific research and blatantly contradicted the most comprehensive government review of the health benefits of marijuana that has been conducted to this date.
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/...
Regarding the HPV Vaccine, which will wipe out cervical cancer a leading cause of death, will virginity pledges also trump science at the FDA? Stay tuned.
George Bush is not my doctor.