The Food and Drug Administration’s decision to indefinitely delay a decision on whether women should be able to buy the “morning-after pill” Plan B without a prescription prompted the resignation of Susan Wood, assistant FDA commissioner for women’s health and director of the Office of Women’s Health. Wood tendered her resignation Wednesday, complaining in an e-mail to her colleagues: “I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled.”
FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford announced the Plan B delay August 26. Wood, in an interview with the Washington Post, suggested politics drove the decision. Her accusation drew a swift response from the American Life League’s Jim Sedlak: “Wood’s insinuation that politics has trumped science describes precisely what has happened for years when the FDA has been faced with decisions regarding dangerous drugs that affect human reproduction. Anti-life politics have taken over. The FDA has consistently lied over the past 40 years, denying that a human being can die when the birth control pill is ingested.”
