{"id":5366,"date":"2005-09-27T12:35:47","date_gmt":"2005-09-27T16:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5366"},"modified":"2005-09-27T12:35:47","modified_gmt":"2005-09-27T16:35:47","slug":"meet-the-new-fda-boss-same-as","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/meet-the-new-fda-boss-same-as\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the new FDA boss, same as&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford suddenly and unexpectedly retired late last week, many observers were relieved. Crawford had developed a well-deserved reputation for following the Bush model of allowing ideology to dictate policy. In Crawford&#8217;s specific case, that meant disconcerting FDA policy on everything from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2005\/08\/26\/AR2005082601192.html\">emergency contraception<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2328.html\">drug reimportation<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/shows\/prescription\/hazard\/\">regulation of the pharmaceutical industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>With Crawford gone, the administration finally had a chance to set the FDA on the right track, right? Well, they may have had a chance, but they decided to stick to the standard game plan. As Nico at Think Progress <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2005\/09\/27\/fda-politics\/\">noted today<\/a>, Bush is replacing one FDA commissioner with a reputation for rigid adherence to an ideological agenda with another.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Dr. Andrew] Von Eschenbach is currently the director of the National Cancer Institute. Within months of his appointment in 2002, the institute abruptly altered a fact sheet on its website &#8220;that for years stated the absence of a link between abortion and breast cancer.&#8221; Under von Eschenbach, the language was changed to suggest that tests disproving the abortion\/breast cancer link were &#8220;inconclusive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This sent the scientific community into an uproar. Numerous studies, including a massive New England Journal of Medicine study of 1.5 million Danish women, have discounted any connection between abortion and breast cancer. Yet right-wingers continue to push the link as a way to frighten women considering having an abortion. <\/p>\n<p>After enormous pressure, and a statement by 100 institute scientists, von Eschenbach backed down. Yet von Eschenbach&#8217;s promotion shows that the days of ideology trumping science at the FDA aren&#8217;t over. (Now it&#8217;s time for the media to pay attention &#8212; not a <i>single<\/i> mainstream story on the FDA personnel changes has mentioned this controversy.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sounds like Von Eschenbach will fit right in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford suddenly and unexpectedly retired late last week, many observers were relieved. Crawford had developed a well-deserved reputation for following the Bush model of allowing ideology to dictate policy. In Crawford&#8217;s specific case, that meant disconcerting FDA policy on everything from emergency contraception to drug reimportation to regulation of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}