The latest casualty of the Bush Administrations war on science was Dr. Susan Wood, the Food and Drug Administration's ranking women's health expert. Her departure occurred due to the hyper-partisan politics the administration regularly engages in at the expense of the scientific community. In this case, the refusal to approve Plan B provides another example of science taking a backseat to the conservative reactionary mindset of an administration that suppresses what doesn't fit its political agenda, a closed-minded train of thought that is permeating across many parts of the country.
Wood, the former assistant commissioner for women's health and director of the Office Women's Health, left due to her perception that political concerns blocked the FDA's own scientific analysis in the case of Plan B, otherwise known as the "morning-after" pill. FDA science advisors approved the pill for over-the-counter sale in 2003 and the FDA staff agreed with the findings. However, managers within the agency disagreed, citing the lack of data available for younger teenagers. Plan B is currently available through prescription only and the FDA chose to indefinitely postpone the approval process by which it can be approved for non-prescription use. There is an urgent need and large market for a pill that some estimates suggest would reduce the number of abortions by 800,000 annually. Though corporate business interests normally lead the way in any decision made by the Bush Administration, in this case they did not. The pill represents huge profits for the Barr Pharmaceutical Company, who developed it, but it is obvious a conservative anti-abortion mentality trumped scientific study and market demand. One might think a pill that could reduce abortions would be right up their alley, but the debate as to when life actually begins clouds discourse. Wood's resignation does not bode well for the FDA, pro-choice advocates and women across the nation.
The debate on evolution education recently found Bush proclaiming that public school teachers should discuss both Darwin's theory of evolution and the concept of intelligent design with equal weight. He declared, "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." This seems fair enough, except that ID is not a theory in the scientific sense; in fact it doesn't explain anything scientifically. It is a school of thought that rests on negative arguments revolving around a theme Dr. Tim Beazley of the National Center for Science Education called: "We don't know therefore we do know." Those who write about ID do not submit findings for peer review, a gauntlet Darwin's theory has continually passed. You would think that die-hard capitalists in power would embrace Darwin's survival of the fittest explanation. It goes hand in hand with the business and increasingly the social theories they espouse. Yet distorted religiosity overrules all. ID is simply a cover for bringing Christian creationism in the classroom, a tactic even more exclusionary to other religions than rejecting the untested ID theory from public schools. Evolution as a theory has undergone scientific examination that ID has not. ID belongs in Sunday school, not public education.
The Bush administration's willingness to allow untested, ignorant theories into public school curricula and pressure scientific agencies into misogynistic decisions is a throwback to the era of book burning, not the golden age conservatives pray for.
