Women: The Government Hates You

Plan B, the “morning after pill”, is available by prescription (at least if your pharmacist decides he’ll let you have it) but was headed for approval for over-the-counter. But before that kind of approval is given, the FDA has to do a study. Well, even though the scientists who conducted the study deemed Plan B safe for over-the- counter use, the application for approval was denied. Hmmm. That’s kind of suspicious, don’t you think?

Well guess what? The decision to deny it was made before the study was even completed.

FDA officials…told us that they were told by high-level management that the Plan B OTC switch application would be denied months before staff had completed their reviews of the application. The Director and Deputy Director of the Office of New Drugs told us that they were told by the Acting Deputy Commissioner for Operations43 and the Acting Director of CDER, after the Plan B public meeting in December 2003, that the decision on the Plan B application would be not-approvable. They informed us that they were also told that the direction for this decision came from the Office of the Commissioner. … Both office reviews were not completed until April 2004.

Dicks.