someone's failing science. . .it's the guv'mint.

Report Details F.D.A. Rejection of Next-Day Pill

Top federal drug officials decided to reject an application to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill months before a government scientific review of the application was completed, according to accounts given to Congressional investigators.
The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, concluded in a report released Monday that the Food and Drug Administration's May 2004 rejection of the morning-after pill, or emergency contraceptive, application was unusual in several respects.
The report suggested that it quickly became apparent that the agency was not going to follow its usual path when it came to the pill. "For example," it said, "F.D.A. review staff told us that they were told early in the review process that the decision would be made by high-level management."
Top agency officials denied many of the report's findings, including its conclusion that the top officials' involvement was unusual and that they had decided to reject the application before the agency's own scientific review was concluded.
But on Monday, Dr. Susan F. Wood, former director of the agency's office of women's health, said that what she described as the F.D.A.'s willingness to ignore science in the service of abortion politics has "only gotten worse" since the events that were the focus of the G.A.O. investigation. Dr. Wood resigned in August after the agency decided to delay its decision on the morning-after pill once again.

what is the goal here? controlling poor, minority women's sexuality and reproduction? serving the right-wing nuts? preserving a caste society? i freakin' don't get it. well, i guess i do, but i really just don't want to. this is pathetic.