A couple of weeks ago, Jonathan Cohn wrote an excellent piece in The New Republic on Plan B — better known as the “morning-after pill” — which can prevent unwanted pregnancies. Cohn detailed why progressives should enthusiastically embrace Plan B’s availability, in part because it’s an easy way to drastically reduce the number of abortions in the country without undermining women’s legal reproductive rights.
In fact, Cohn went point by point to highlight how foolish and irresponsible right-wing complaints have become. The right says Plan B may not be safe, but medical experts here and around the world say otherwise. The right says Plan B is tantamount to abortion, but if a fertilized egg doesn’t get implanted in the uterus, the woman can’t get pregnant. The right says Plan B might promote risky sexual behavior, but peer-reviewed studies published in mainstream medical publications repeatedly found no such link.
As it turns out, when Cohn concluded conservatives are crazy to oppose Plan B, he probably didn’t realize how right he was.
Soon after the Food and Drug Administration overruled its advisory panel last year and rejected an application to make an emergency contraceptive more easily available, critics of the agency said it had ignored scientific evidence and yielded to pressure from social conservatives.
The agency denied the charge, but an outspoken evangelical conservative doctor on the panel subsequently acknowledged in a previously unreported public sermon that he was asked to write a memo to the FDA commissioner soon after the panel voted 23 to 4 in favor of over-the-counter sales of the contraceptive, called Plan B. He said he believes his memo played a central role in the rejection of that recommendation.
The new information comes from a videotaped sermon in October by W. David Hager. On the tape, he said he was asked to write a “minority report” that would outline why over-the-counter sales should be rejected.
Speaking at the Asbury College chapel in Wilmore, Ky., Hager said, “I was asked to write a minority opinion that was sent to the commissioner of the FDA. For only the second time in five decades, the FDA did not abide by its advisory committee opinion, and the measure was rejected.”
To get a sense of Hager’s perspective — and why he had no business serving on this FDA panel in the first place — consider that when he described his rebellion against the FDA advisory panel’s recommendation, he claimed, “I argued from a scientific perspective, and God took that information, and he used it through this minority report to influence the decision. Once again, what Satan meant for evil, God turned into good.”
But wait; it gets worse.
Hager also may have lied about the origins of his apparently influential memo.
In an e-mail to The Washington Post, Hager said the request for the report came from “outside the agency,” but he had previously told two other journalists — in one case in an e-mail that the recipient saved — that the request came from an FDA staff member.
An FDA spokeswoman said yesterday that the agency did not ask Hager to write a report and that Hager sent what she called a “private citizen letter” to Commissioner Mark McClellan. “We don’t ask for minority reports and opinions,” she said. “I’ve been advised that nobody from the FDA asked him to write the letter.”
This may be significant. In his controversial sermon, Hager specifically said he was asked to write his ridiculous minority opinion, which was sent to the commissioner of the FDA and seems to have affected the agency’s conclusion on Plan B. But something doesn’t add up — not only has Hager contradicted himself responding to questions from the press, but the FDA never asked for a minority opinion and several panel members never even heard of it.
Keep in mind, Hager’s record of being stark, raving mad isn’t new. Before getting appointed to a committee whose job it is to evaluate data and make recommendations on the safety and effectiveness of drugs for use in obstetrics, Hager wrote books advocating reading Scripture as an appropriate treatment for PMS, denied contraceptives to his patients unless they were married, and endorsed the medically inaccurate assertion that the common birth control pill is an abortifacient.
So, can responsible government figures step in and get this guy away from the FDA before he does any more damage? They could, but it’s more likely — true to form in Bush’s America — he’ll be promoted.
…David Hager’s stock has been rising among conservatives. Though his term on the FDA panel is set to expire on June 30, observers on both sides of the political divide anticipate his reappointment. In March I spoke with Janice Shaw Crouse, executive director and senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the research arm of Concerned Women for America. She is one of Hager’s staunchest advocates in Washington (some credit her with engineering his FDA appointment); Crouse sits alongside Hager on Asbury College’s board of trustees. In May, when informed of the allegations against him, she declined to revise her earlier statement. “I would not be at all surprised to see Dr. Hager elevated to a higher position or to another very influential position when it comes to women’s care,” she told me.
Be afraid.