Hillary Clinton usually decries the greed of pharmaceutical
companies. But she suspends her distaste for them if they profit
off abortifacients and other drugs that liberals happen to like.
This week she renewed her attacks on the FDA for delaying approval
of Barr pharmaceutical’s abortifacient, Plan B. Clinton wanted the
FDA to approve sale of the abortifacient for over-the-counter use,
meaning that 17-year-olds could pick it up at CVS along with their
Snickers bars and Pepsi.
Under the Clintons in the 1990s, the FDA would often entangle
pharmaceutical companies in bureaucratic tape and delay. FDA
Commissioner David Kessler, to the delight of the left, distrusted
these companies, using a Naderite emphasis on extreme caution to
block helpful drugs. And Hillary cheered him on. But now she
demands the FDA act with haste. Now she favors a heedless and
streamlining FDA, since the drugs in question are life-ending
rather than life-saving.
And don’t worry about labeling Plan B too precisely either, she
hectors Bush’s FDA after decades of demanding that the FDA label
everything in sight. As James Bovard reported in The American
Spectator in 1995, Kessler, with left-wing winds at his back,
behaved like a bully and lout if companies didn’t label products to
his satisfaction. He had U.S. marshals destroy 12,000 gallons of
orange juice because they didn’t have “Made from Concentrate” in
large enough print on them.
Has anybody died from orange juice concentrate? No, but human
embryos will die from the chemical poison Plan B and safety-first
liberals see nothing unsafe in that and oppose precise warning
labels on it lest teens avoid the drug. Hillary Clinton says Bush’s
FDA is “run not on the basis of science but on ideology,” yet for
baldly ideological reasons she will try and silence any FDA
official who questions the prudence of placing abortifacients in
the hands of teens.
The same liberals who hold hearings on vitamins and dietary
supplements will sabotage hearings on the dangers of
abortifacients. Does Henry Waxman who has held hearings on dietary
supplements consider them more dangerous than a drug whose whole
purpose is to be dangerous — that is, endanger an embryo?
As James Bovard also pointed out, the left will subject
innocuous medical devices to intense scrutiny. In the 1990s, the
FDA held up approval of mint-flavored dental floss and wheelchair
cushions and micromanaged the manufacture of shower commode chairs.
Shouldn’t Plan B receive as much scrutiny as dental floss? And
shouldn’t liberals who accuse pharmaceutical companies of greed at
the drop of a hat be wary of a company that wants to rack up
profits from selling abortifacients over the counter?
Oh, that’s right: making a killing off killing is not greed but
left-wing charity, an occasion for Hillary Clinton to applaud
Planned Parenthood, which makes millions of dollars off abortion
each year, for its contributions to the “community.” Liberals will
even help these pharmaceutical companies they would call greedy in
any other context rake in money by propagandizing teens that they
should view Plan B like “band-aids” — something useful to pick up
at the corner store should something go awry down the line.
Hillary Clinton is working hard for that day when Plan B goes in
the shelves where cigarettes once sat. And no matter how many
dangers they pose to the common weal the left won’t say a word.
That the FDA under the Bush administration is concerned that Plan B
will undermine public health by encouraging reckless behavior is
“politics,” according to Hillary Clinton. Yet her refusal even to
consider the public health implications of this drug isn’t? She and
her husband demand that childhood corpulence be studied —
“obesity” hearings are a pressing national need, they argue — but
she won’t entertain FDA concerns about the obvious possibility that
Plan B will increase the volume of sexually transmitted
disease.
Nor will this self-appointed advocate for children and women
give the time of day to scientists who point out that young women
like Holly Patterson are dying from RU-486 because the drug can
erode the immune system and make women susceptible to septic shock.
All but one of the deaths so far from RU-486 have been due to
septic shock, and scientists had warned the FDA that the drug was
dangerous. But the Democrats, displaying the politicization they
now assign to Bush’s FDA, didn’t want to listen.
Eric Shaff, chair of the National Abortion Federation, claimed
that RU-486 is less dangerous than aspirin. And if Hillary gets her
way, abortifacients like Plan B will get their own aisle near them
at CVS.
