it handled *Plan A* (Iraq War). Manipulate the evidence until it fits your own agenda and then impose it on America. One doctor's personal religious views now control the FDA and every woman in America.
The Debate Over Plan B
Nov. 27, 2005 (CBS) When the “morning after pill,” also known as “Plan B,” was put on the market in 1999, it was described as an emergency contraceptive that prevents a pregnancy in cases of rape or accidents like condom breaks.
It is only available by prescription. But because women need to take it within 72 hours, the drug's manufacturer applied to the Food and Drug Administration two years ago for permission to sell Plan B over the counter.
The drug is considered totally safe, so the request was seen as a slam dunk. But then Plan B became the target of anti-abortion rights groups, and part of the wider controversy over whether religious beliefs are encroaching on scientific decision-making. 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.
Until last August, Dr. Susan Wood headed the FDA’s Office of Women’s Health and was one of the scientists inside the agency arguing that Plan B should be available without a prescription. “If it's safe, and it is, and effective, it's more effective the quicker you have it. This is why it needs to be over-the-counter,” she says.
“If you need it on Saturday morning, Monday morning is too late. Getting to a physician to get a prescription, getting that prescription to a pharmacy and getting it filled takes time, as we all know. Then what are you going to do?” says Wood.
That’s a question that a woman named Evelyn faced last year, when she was raped at a New York nightclub.
Evelyn, age 22 at the time, was rushed to St. Vincent’s hospital, the nearest emergency room.
She says the hospital did not offer her an emergency contraceptive.
“It was something that they were supposed to offer,” says Evelyn’s mother, Sandi. “In the situation as my daughter’s, as Evelyn’s situation, they were supposed to offer, you know, and let the person make the decision as to whether or not they wanted it. I didn’t know that it was optional.”
Sandi says she knew about a New York law that says all hospitals must offer rape victims emergency contraception like Plan B.
Sandi called the nurse who had treated Evelyn at St. Vincent’s. “I said, ‘Why did you not give it to her?’ And she very rudely said to me, ‘Well, we're a Catholic hospital. We don't do birth control.’ At which point, I told them what they could do with being a Catholic hospital and their views on birth control — I'd rather not say that on the air,” she recalls. “I was absolutely livid.”
Because of Evelyn's case, St. Vincent’s is under investigation by the state of New York. The hospital told 60 Minutes it is now complying with the law.
Evelyn finally got a prescription for Plan B, and took it 10 hours after the rape. Had she not gotten Plan B and had gotten pregnant, Evelyn says she would have had an abortion. “I'm glad that that didn't have to happen, I never had to experience that, she says.
The Catholic Church opposes Plan B not just because it’s birth control, but because it considers use of Plan B to be, in Cardinal Egan of New York’s words, “a chemical abortion.”
But Wood says this is not an abortion pill. “There is an abortion pill called RU-486, and this is not it,” she says. “An abortion pill interrupts an established pregnancy. This product is contraception. It does not interrupt an established pregnancy.”
She says even if you took it and were already pregnant, it would not end the pregnancy. “The only connection this product has with abortion is that it can prevent them by preventing an unintended pregnancy,” says Wood.
There is some debate about that interpretation. Most of the time, Plan B works by stopping ovulation so that a pregnancy cannot occur. In a small percentage of cases, when a woman is ovulating on the day she has unprotected sex, a fertilized egg could form. In that case, Plan B might prevent the egg from implanting in her uterus.
While most doctors do not consider that an abortion, anti-abortion-rights doctors do, such as David Hager, a gynecologist from Lexington, Ky., who won’t prescribe Plan B for his own patients.
“One of the mechanisms of action can be to inhibit implantation, which means that it may act as an abortifacient,” says Dr. Hager. He says abortifacient means it causes an abortion and that this medication may act to inhibit implantation.
In 2002, Dr. Hager got a call from the Bush White House asking him to serve on the FDA advisory committee charged with reviewing Plan B’s over-the-counter application along with two other anti-abortion-rights physicians. But when Hager argued against Plan B at committee meetings, he didn’t talk about abortion.
“I was concerned about 10, 11, 12-year-old girls buying this product,” says Hager.
He raised moral questions. “I’m not in favor of promotion of a product that would increase sexual activity among teenagers,” he says.
Hager speculated about an increase in sexually-transmitted diseases. “I’m saying that it is possible that with the use of Plan B the individual may put herself at greater risk,” he says.
But the advisory panel reviewed 40 studies that refuted his objections and showed that Plan B does not lead to more cases of sexually transmitted disease, or more risky sexual behavior.
Even Dr. Hager admits Plan B is totally safe. The FDA says there have been no deaths, no heart attacks, no strokes and no evidence of misuse or abuse.
But, he says, one of his major concerns is that young women wouldn’t go to their doctors if such a drug were readily available.
“If we approve this for over-the-counter sale, then what is that going to do as far as what I call access to medical care for younger adolescent women?” Hager asks.
Wood disputes that view. “Is this cutting the doctor out? Would it cut out their relationship? Well, in fact, I think there’s strong argument that the physicians themselves want this product to be over the counter.”
Wood says the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Association have all endorsed making this product available over the counter. That includes pediatrics, meaning younger girls.
If Plan B is sold over the counter anyone — any age — could buy it easily in a drugstore, like cough syrup or bubble bath. A big part of this issue is whether pharmacies will stock it. What if they refuse to carry Plan B?
In a survey of drugstores in Kentucky, Dr. Hager’s home state, the American Civil Liberties Union found that most pharmacies didn’t carry Plan B; 83 of them said they would even refuse to order it for women with prescriptions. These include Wal-Mart, which has a nationwide policy against dispensing Plan B.
The American Civil Liberties Union got a prescription for a woman named Fran, and sent her to five pharmacies undercover. 60 Minutes went along with a hidden camera to see what would happen.
Only one pharmacy, Kmart, had Plan B in stock; another drug store offered to order it, but the pharmacist told Fran it would take several days before they could possibly get it.
Remember, it has to be taken within 72 hours.
At another store, Fran was turned down by a pharmacist who explained that she believes it’s an abortion pill. “The morning after pill is after you have that fertilized egg, and that is a baby. You are not allowing it to implant. So it is considered abortive,” the pharmacist said.
The next day, Fran and 60 Minutes went back to that pharmacy together and found the same pharmacist.
“Anyone can walk in off the street and we can refuse to fill a prescription,” the pharmacists said. Asked whether a prescription could be refused on religious grounds, the pharmacists said, “On any grounds. Personal preference. Any reason, we can refuse to fill a prescription.”
But the Kentucky state pharmacy board told 60 Minutes that pharmacists must have a professional medical reason, not simply a personal preference, to turn away a prescription for Plan B or anything else.
The pharmacy did offer birth control but the pharmacist did not consider Plan B birth control.
So, with Plan B mired in the abortion debate, the FDA advisory committee took its vote on recommending whether it should be sold over the counter.
Dr. Hager voted “no.” But his colleagues on the committee rejected his arguments, voting 23 to four in favor of offering the drug over the counter.
Such a lop-sided vote should have meant the application would sail through. But then the saga of Plan B took a strange turn.
Dr. Hager says someone at the FDA — he won’t say who — asked him to write a “minority report” in which he asked for more studies and more data on the use of Plan B by young girls.
A few months later something totally unexpected happened: The FDA ignored the committee’s overwhelming vote and rejected the proposal to sell Plan B over the counter, citing the very concerns in Hager’s report.
Some people believe Hager raised these objections because of his religious beliefs, but that’s something he denies. “The religious aspect did not enter into that decision for me,” he says.
But in to a speech he gave to a Christian college, he seemed to admit his role was all about religion. “God has used me to stand in the breach for the cause of the kingdom,” Hager said at the time.
He was talking about Plan B.
“I argued it from a scientific perspective. And God took that information and He used it through this minority report to influence a decision. You don't have to wave your bible to have an effect as a Christian in the public arena,” says Hager.
Hager says he did not mean to suggest that God wanted Plan B to fail, and that he was His instrument. “I thought that God used me, He'd used my individual gifts of, whatever, in an individual way to be able to express my opinion.”
But with the speech, Hager may have fueled the fire of those who say that all he did was try to cloak religious beliefs in scientific language.
“If the idea in the population of this country is that a person can’t be a person of faith and also be a person of science, I strongly disagree with that,” says Hager.
Should agencies like the FDA be completely divorced from the debates that go on in society?
“Again, the question the agency has to deal with is, is it safe? And is it safe for teens? Yes, it is,” says Wood. “Have we asked that question about other contraceptive methods? Are we going to label, take condoms behind the counter? Make them prescription? I don't think we should.
“I think most Americans would like to leave those decisions as private decisions, and decisions within the family.”
Plan B’s manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals, submitted a new application to the FDA with an age cut-off, so that girls 16 and younger would still need a prescription to get the drug. This seemed to address Hager’s objections and those of the anti-abortion rights lobby.
But last August, then-FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford surprised just about everyone when he announced that the agency had postponed a decision on the new application for what could be months or years. He took the unprecedented step of overruling his own scientific staff.
“I think the Plan B decision to cut the scientists out is sort of a poster child of this concern about science and politics,” says Wood.
She’s talking about fears that religious forces are hijacking government decision-making. Wood was so outraged by the FDA postponement that she promptly resigned as director of the Office of Women’s Health in protest.
“What I saw was the science being ignored. That the scientific and medical staff (was) being cut out of decision making,” says Wood.
In fact, according to a government investigation, top FDA officials had decided to reject Plan B’s over the counter application months before the scientific staff completed its review.
Was there pressure from the White House? The investigators said they couldn’t find out because e-mails and documents relating to the matter were destroyed.
As for Plan B as an over-the-counter drug, nobody knows when a decision on that will be made.
The White House on Friday threw its support behind a plan to speed release of $25 billion in existing loans to the Big Three automakers but rejected a Democratic proposal to use money from a financial bailout to help the troubled industry.
The $700 billion financial rescue package was never intended to help automakers and shouldn't be now, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told The Associated Press. But since Democratic leaders in Congress are pressing forward with a proposal to carve out a piece of its for the auto industry, she said the White House has decided to pursue a different approach: accelerating the availability of federal loans Congress first approved in September.
Those loans were approved to help automakers build more fuel-efficient vehicles and become more competitive companies in the global marketplace. The administration now supports allowing the loans to be released more quickly than the original legislation prescribed and to be used for more urgent purposes as the companies struggle to stay afloat.
"Democrats are choosing a path that would only lead to partisan gridlock," she said. "We are now actively calling on Congress to amend the loan program."
Out of 10,800 banks in this country, only .5% of 1% of the banks failed...............
which means Obama should have left it all alone. If he truly had people around him that cared about this country, they would have informed him to let the banks fail, that there were plenty of strong ones out there and he should just let the chips fall where they may.
He has stuck this country to the tune of trillions and we will be paying the price big time in a year or so when the inflation boom hits...... he preyed on fear, knowing so many would just think he suddenly knows the best thing to do. The best thing to do was nothing. Private companies fail all the time and the stronger ones survive. Simple as that. Strong ones buy out the weaker ones. That would have happened with no interference from the governement at all, as usual! Just like all the car manufacturers aren't failing. Fiat is looking at buying Saturn..... and life goes on. Private businesses should always be left alone.
The only reason AIG got such a big bailout is because many democratic friends of Obama and his cronies work there.... the names aren't that hard to find but you have to look for who knows who to start getting the picture. Such a pathetic shame!
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/07/news/companies/bank_failure/index.htm?postversion=2008110721&eref=rss_topstories
Sorry, not buying it.....
*I don't like Michael Moore.* Well, I can't imagine why. If you really aren't reading him, then you should be suing him, because your material is the same, right down to the disdainful delivery. Mind cluing me in on the nonpartisan more scholarly research? One or two examples would suffice.
Not buying it. It is about -me me me.
nm
don;t forget foreign banks
successfully lobbied to be included in this bailout. (John McCain's financial advisor Phil Gram is head of USB, Swiss bank)
And government ownership of banks.
x
it is called "job banks" and -
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008/11/21/automakers-ask-bailout-paying-workers-sit/
Here's the link to read all the information. They can do volunteer work for the community if they want to - but it is not required. Mostly they just sit there and collect the $31 an hour.
It should be $$ for banks, big oil and wall street, right?
x
And banks didn't have a choice?
They loaned money to people to buy McMansions that they could not afford - on purpose. The housing industry was booming. That way, they could forclose on these bad loans - keep the down payments and subsequent payments and resell the house. They were trading paper. Maybe you ought to educate yourself. Nah. Too far of a stretch. After all, the constitution-abiding president who just slunk off with his tail between his legs wasn't at all concerned about civil rights or the constitution. He was playing monopoly and destroying everything in his path - like rich, spoiled little boys do. You know, the ones who go AWOL from their service and receive no punishment. He probably still suckles grandma Barbara.
Oh, I get it. Kinda like the bailed out banks
I feel so much better now.
How many mortgages got sold to other banks?
Look at the big picture. They were selling houses to anyone who would sign on the dotted line - they did not give a fig whether or not you could afford it. They then boxed up a pile of these mortgages and sold them to other banks or mortgage companies with the premise - here's a box of rocks, there's gotta be a diamond in there somewhere. They WANTED these mortgages to fail. The housing market was booming - take the down payment, pass the mortgage around - foreclose on hapless patsies - and resell the house. They were MAKING MONEY OFF OF DOING THIS!!! But, they got greedy, and that box held all rocks and no diamonds. They screwed themselves as well as the American people who fell for this sham. But who is going to suffer the most?
That happened when the **banks got drunk**
//
Nice try...not buying it! (nm)
The police are not buying it either. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the Republicans are beyond desperate at this point!
well, 43% are out buying ammo and
43% are going over their past emails and organization memberships and the other 14% are undecided which way to go and are sitting here handwringing.
Oh pleeeese - I'm not buying it
This is about people obeying the laws...plain and simple. I sick to death of hearing these people talk about how your being "picked on".
Any group/congregation who hold regularly schedule meetings of a large group of people need to get a business license just like anyone else.
What's even more pitiful are the delusional/dysfunctional ones who actually believe they are being picked on simply because they are christians.
Get a grip! Nobody cares what religion you are. If there is a large group of people meeting on a regular basis inconveniencing the neighbors in their own homes, that is called a business. Get a license and the problems will be cleared up.
I live across the street from a guy who turned his home into a car repair shop. Can't tell you how many times our driveway is blocked and no where for our friends to park.
One rule to follow that's very simple. Obey the law. Disobey the law and you should go to jail.
Okay, he is buying them one more year -
Maybe by the end of that year things will be looking better for everybody and they can start to help themselves again.
I compare this to my daughter not having a job and needing my help right now, but hopefully by the end of the year she will be back on her feet and can survive on her own.
At least give people a chance. If he was doing nothing but letting people fend for themselves you would be mad too. Change has got to start somewhere!
I'm not buying his music and never will
and will never listen to it.
This is truly socialism. These banks and rich Wall
Street types would be crying out if they gov't did this for the people, but they are begging for the help now. They had better come up with a plan that includes not big pay days for CEOs, etc. I was watching The View and Whoppi said they need to include something for the people, like wiping out half of the mortgages so the actual people who will benefit the economy, i.e. us because we spend money here in the U.S. can get back on our feets and go out and put some money back in the economy and not have to worry about losing a home, etc. I totally agree with that, but I can pretty much guarantee that will not happen.
Marx: Centralize credit in the banks.
private property. Right any bells?
A Quiet Windfall for US Banks (While You Weren't Looking)
Here's you starter-kit that went under the radar screen, tax and spend lovers...
Who gave the banks all that money with no oversight?
This site would be much more interesting if you knew what you were talking about. You'll be sniveling in the bread lines along with the rest of us as a result of Bush's "I'm the Decider" BS. Better add some vodka to that Kool-Aid - it's going to be a miserable ride.
Same with the banks - they've lost MY business,
- if EVER. Take my Mastercard, for instance. Been a loyal customer, same bank for 30 years, yada, yada. Always make my payments, often in full, and other times way over the minimum. Never late, my checks don't bounce. So they raise my finance charges from 9% to 29% in one fell swoop!
Needless to say, that's it for me. I cleaned out my bank savings (which was only earning about .02% interest), and paid off the Mastercard with it. Will close the account. Now that there are checking account debit-cards, who needs the charge card? Plus it'll keep me from spending more than I have. In a dire emergency, I can always siphon a little out of my money market (which still earns something like 4-5% interest) to pay for emergencies in FULL, without running up credit card fees. So, there goes part of the banks' income!
If all of us rearranged our finances in such a way that we pay NO fees or finance charges, maybe the banks would have to find an HONEST way to make a profit. Wouldn't THAT be a revelation.
Buying of news..by this administration? Really? For sure!
Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal
Published: October 1, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.
In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated covert propaganda in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.
The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities.
Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education.
The auditors declared: We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds.
The report also sharply criticized the Education Department for telling Ketchum Inc., a public relations company, to pay Mr. Williams for newspaper columns and television appearances praising Mr. Bush's education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act.
When that arrangement became public, it set off widespread criticism. At a news conference in January, Mr. Bush said: We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet.
But the Education Department has since defended its payments to Mr. Williams, saying his commentaries were no more than the legitimate dissemination of information to the public.
The G.A.O. said the Education Department had no money or authority to procure favorable commentary in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition in federal law.
The ruling comes with no penalty, but under federal law the department is supposed to report the violations to the White House and Congress.
In the course of its work, the accountability office discovered a previously undisclosed instance in which the Education Department had commissioned a newspaper article. The article, on the declining science literacy of students, was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country. Readers were not informed of the government's role in the writing of the article, which praised the department's role in promoting science education.
The auditors denounced a prepackaged television story disseminated by the Education Department. The segment, a video news release narrated by a woman named Karen Ryan, said that President Bush's program for providing remedial instruction and tutoring to children gets an A-plus.
Ms. Ryan also narrated two videos praising the new Medicare drug benefit last year. In those segments, as in the education video, the narrator ended by saying, In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting.
The television news segments on education and on Medicare did not state that they had been prepared and distributed by the government. The G.A.O. did not say how many stations carried the reports.
The public relations efforts came to light weeks before Margaret Spellings became education secretary in January. Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for the secretary, said on Friday that Ms. Spellings regarded the efforts as stupid, wrong and ill-advised. She said Ms. Spellings had taken steps to ensure these types of missteps don't happen again.
The investigation by the accountability office was requested by Senators Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats. Mr. Lautenberg expressed concern about a section of the report in which investigators said they could not find records to confirm that Mr. Williams had performed all the activities for which he billed the government.
The Education Department said it had paid Ketchum $186,000 for services performed by Mr. Williams's company. But it could not provide transcripts of speeches, articles or records of other services invoiced by Mr. Williams, the report said.
Nice try, but I am not buying, and I doubt others are either.
Your style of posting is obvious and it is not hard to figure it out. You post under different monikers to pile on and support your own points, in the same condescending manner. You just messed up this time and forgot what moniker you were posting under. So now we all know the truth...so let's just let it drop. Put a fork in it...it's done.
Who in their right mind would be buying but the elite?
This is a great site, explains derivatives (hedge funds) which Warren Buffett calls WMD. If I understand it correctly, people bet on funds just like football, at a whopping total of 16 trillion dollar world wide. No one knows who owns them or who sells them. They cannot be traced.
It is very strange. Cramer of Mad Money has even mentioned "financial terrorism."
I bet you 25 cents the market collapses tomorrow. This link is very informative. But in the end, even the politicians do not quite understand how this works as well as the brightest minds in economics.
They don't want to buy any more of our debt, as our $ is almost worthless. They've been buying up homes in southern CA big-time. They already know that this most liberal "plan" will make the US self-destruct.
Those who voted for this man and refused to listen to many of us who said h'ed do this, don't cry to me. This is merely the beginning.
She said ACORN bullied banks into giving the loans....
she just said Obama was associated with them. ACORN did bully banks, and Obama WAS associated with them, through Project Vote. He trained the ACORN folks how to get out and get people registered, hired them to work on his senate campaign, and ACORN endorsed him. And they are under investigation for voter fraud in ALL the swing states. Admitted in Ohio today: yes, there will be fraud, its not our fault, we can't check every registration. Sounds like "He was just a guy in the neighborhood" excuse. Looks like he taught them well.
marks the location of current message within thread
