The Mourning After

Three years ago, President-elect Obama, while naming his science advisors, promised to take an entirely different approach to science than his predecessor. He said it was time to “once again put science at the top of our agenda.” Science is about facts and evidence, he said, that “are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology.”

It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient—especially when it's inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States.

One area where the Bush administration flagrantly ignored scientific evidence was reproductive policy. They rejected any change that the Religious Right mistakenly assumed would encourage gay or premarital sex. This included their outright refusal to allow the sale of Plan B One-Step, the morning after contraceptive pill, to anyone without a prescription in 2004, and their refusal to allow sale without a prescription to minors in 2006.

Of course, politics would never trump science with the Jackass Party in power, right?

The other day, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced that the Obama administration would reject the unanimous recommendation of the scientific advisory board of the Food and Drug Administration that Plan B be made available to teenage girls without a prescription.

In defending the decision, President Obama said that Secretary Sebelius was not sure that “a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old” would be able to understand how to use the product. The age reference is pure propaganda, considering how unlikely it is that a 10- or 11-year-old will first have sex, then be able to afford the $40-50 per dose fee, and, finally, find a pharmacist willing to sell it to her. But what is particularly upsetting thing about the President's statement is that the FDA conducted studies specifically to test teenagers' understanding of how to take the pill. The FDA Commissioner wrote:

CDER (Center for Drug Evaluation and Research) carefully considered whether younger females were able to understand how to use Plan B One-Step. Based on the information submitted to the agency, CDER determined that the product was safe and effective in adolescent females. . . . Additionally, the data supported a finding that adolescent females could use Plan B One-Step properly without the intervention of a healthcare provider.

Not only did Sebelius and Obama ignore this advice, they dishonestly spoke as if such research had never been done.

It's hard to believe that the President will pick up any votes from the Religious Right as a result of this decision. But with the way the 2012 campaign is shaping up—with the Elephant Party choosing among candidates who seem to lack an accurate conception of reality, and with no challenger from the progressive side—the President apparently feels free to poke his most loyal supporters in the eye with a sharp stick any time he feels like it.

Finally, let me give a shout-out to Marie McCullough, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette now has a cooperative relationship with the Inquirer, which undoubtedly allowed them both to lay off some reporters, but which resulted in her article being published in Pittsburgh. After describing pressure from the manufacturer to approve the sale of the drug, she made the following comment:

On the other side of the campaign were conservative religious and political groups. They believed easy access to contraception would lead teenagers to have earlier, riskier sex; overuse the backup method while neglecting more reliable birth control; avoid consulting physicians; and become victims of sexual abuse. With about a thousand studies of emergency contraception now in the medical literature, there is no evidence to support these beliefs, but conservatives continue to hold them. (Italics mine)

We live in a media environment in which reporters and editors slavishly follow a norm of false balancing in which every political opinion, no matter how far-fetched, is treated as equally credible, and reporters never mention evidence to suggest which side of a political controversy is factually correct. Ms. McCullough is to be congratulated. I hope she doesn't lose her job.