The FDA has been burdened by a series of debacles in recent years, but from a political perspective, few have been as embarrassing as the agency’s inability to do anything right with regards to Plan B contraception.
Nearly two years ago, an FDA advisory panel voted 23 to 4 to approve over-the-counter access to this emergency contraception pill. One FDA panel member called it the “safest drug that we have seen brought before us.” The scientific evidence was overwhelming and access to Plan B would curtail abortion and unwanted pregnancies. This was a no-brainer and, under normal circumstances, it’d be the end of the story.
And yet, Bush’s FDA screwed it up anyway. In August, after 28 months of work, the FDA indefinitely postponed its decision on Plan B availability. Considering the far-right’s opposition to the medication, this appeared another blatant example of the politicization of science. The move prompted two FDA officials to resign in protest.
Perhaps even more importantly, FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, literally just two months after getting confirmed for the job by the Senate, suddenly decided to resign for no apparent reason. And this is where the interesting follow-up begins.
The former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration declined to cooperate with an inquiry by the Government Accountability Office into the agency’s controversial decision to reject nonprescription sales of an emergency contraceptive.
According to congressional staffers who have read the draft GAO report but were not allowed to copy it, the document has several footnotes indicating Lester M. Crawford did not respond to requests for an interview.
During the period examined by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, Crawford was deputy FDA commissioner and then acting commissioner of the agency. He was confirmed as permanent FDA commissioner in July and then abruptly resigned last month.
Lester Crawford, in other words, has something to hide.
In a nutshell, Crawford had a choice between explaining the FDA’s decisions to non-partisan congressional investigators, or quitting the job he’d just received. He chose the latter.
As Mark Kleiman put it, the likelihood is that Crawford couldn’t very well admit that the Bush gang leaned on the FDA to ignore the science, so resignation was the only viable option.
That suggests to me that Crawford’s repeated assertions to the press that there was no White House pressure behind the decision to indefinitely postpone action on Plan B were false, and that Crawford didn’t want to repeat that lie to investigators lest he wind up in Martha Stewart land. Once the GAO report came out, he was going to be asked questions by various Congressional committees, so he decided to bug out.
Remember this the next time someone tells you that the Bush Administration’s subservience to the TV preachers isn’t really harmful.
Exactly. The more radical elements of the GOP base may not get everything they ask for (cough, cough, Harriet Miers, cough), but on issues of public health, the administration still seems more than willing to let the far right call the shots.