The
questions Lea raises are important ones. The health and wellbeing of
Americans is not the top concern of the FDA or any governmental body, as is
clearly seen by our healthcare policies. Politics and profit trump
humanitarian concerns. The profit and capitalist innovation and progress, one
might say, lead to improved drugs and treatments that ultimately help all
those in society. Another might say, though, that that is bullshit emitted
from the minority with the resources to access that “innovation” and
“progress.”
In 2004,
drug companies donated $13 million to political campaigns across the country –
about 66% of them Republican. Lea points out that 4 people have died from
RU-486 (“the abortion pill.”) These women died of secondary infections
that are loosely and inconclusively linked to the pill, yet the pill was
slapped with a scary warning. When I used to play football, I developed lower
back problems, for which my doctor prescribed Vioxx. There was no warning on
that pill, and now 27,000 people are dead. 27,000 people who have had
heart attacks and strokes because a conglomerate like Merck is able to pay its
way in. Even senators concede that there is collusion: according to Senator
Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the FDA and drug
manufacturers are “far too cozy.” The FDA ignores warnings from its own
scientists to they can appease the big donors.
But back to
the abortion pill. Why couldn’t the drug companies pay their way out of a
warning? Was the pressure from the Christian Right really that strong? Well,
yes, but that’s because the company that produces RU-486 is a French
company and therefore unable to make political donations. It seems pretty
clear that the government would rather please the Evangelicals than the
French.
Political
maneuvering outweighs health concerns, especially when the concerns are for
women. In regard to pharmacists and the “conscience clause” (initiated by
John Kerry), there has been at least one case in which the pharmacist denied
emergency contraception to a woman who had been raped. It doesn’t get much
more disgusting and infuriating than that. The FDA’s own scientists
recommended that EC be provided over-the-counter (a recommendation that, in
this country, must meet very high standards). The FDA overruled the
experts. It has always been about money and politics. Now, though, it is
about money, politics, and Jesus.