Sunday, August 06, 2006
Editorial: FDA needs a scientist, not another politician
The FDA's acting head continues to play politics with Americans' lives. The Senate should refuse to confirm Dr. Andrew von Eshchenbach.
From the RoundTable blog
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As acting director of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach has stayed the president's course. The FDA remains a political agency concerned more with the fiscal health of business than the physical health of Americans, and one in which the president's social values overrule sound science.
President Bush plans to reward him and has asked the Senate to confirm his nomination. Senators need to look beyond von Eschenbach's impeccable résumé. His credentials, including the helm of the National Cancer Institute, are indeed impressive, but they are overshadowed by his peccant reputation for ignoring science when it contradicts his political agenda.
The FDA director should above all things put the public's safety first.
A survey of 1,000 FDA employees, released last month by the Union of Concerned Scientists, found the opposite occurs: 61 percent knew of cases in which political appointees interfered with agency decisions; fewer than half think the "FDA routinely provides complete and accurate information to the public;" and one-fifth "have been asked, for nonscientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in a FDA scientific document."
The most public and controversial of these decision has been the failure of the FDA, despite its scientific panel's recommendation, to approve over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill known as Plan B.
On the eve of his Senate confirmation hearing, von Eschenbach said he is willing now to make Plan B available without a prescription to women 18 years and older. Until it became politically expedient for his own gain, von Eschenbach allowed the opinions of social conservatives rather than medical know-how to decide whether women should have access to birth control --just as his predecessor had.
For more than a year Plan B -- which safely blocks pregnancies by preventing conception if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex -- has remained unavailable to women without prescriptions.
There is no way to know how many abortions or unwanted pregnancies would have been prevented. Nor is it known how many pain sufferers' hearts were injured from the Vioxx debacle, nor how many children's parents were not warned of the dangers that anti-depressants pose for children -- just a few instances in which the FDA placed the interests of pharmaceutical companies over those of patients.
Under von Eschenbach, the FDA continues to stray from its duty to protect Americans' health as it tags along with an administration that finds science an inconvenience.
