Originally published October 10 2005
Controversy over the approval of the morning after pill continues inside the FDA
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Dr. Frank Davidoff resigned from the FDA's Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee, in protest over what he terms the association's political concerns, which have rendered useless a large amount of clinical and scientific data that supports Plan B, the morning after contraceptive
Dr. Frank Davidoff, an internal medicine specialist, said Thursday he stepped down from his position as a consultant to the FDA's Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee about a month ago.
Members of that panel and another committee of outside experts voted 23-4 in December 2003 to recommend non-prescription sales of the contraceptive, called Plan B.
The FDA so far has rejected that advice, as well as support from the agency's scientific staff.
Then-FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford announced August 26 he was postponing a decision indefinitely and taking public comment for 60 days.
That delay "crossed the line for me," Davidoff said in an interview.
Some conservative groups have lobbied fiercely to keep Plan B as a prescription-only product.
An FDA spokeswoman said Davidoff had been "a valued member of FDA's advisory committee" since 2001, and the agency "had hoped to continue using his services as an FDA consultant" after his term expired this year.
Crawford said in August that officials still were grappling with how to keep a prescription requirement for girls younger than 17 while easing access for older women.
Davidoff's resignation, reported earlier this week by the Hartford Courant newspaper, follows the departure of Dr. Susan Wood, the FDA's top women's health official.
Wood, who has a doctorate in biology, quit in August to protest the Plan B decision.
Davidoff, editor emeritus of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, said he felt Plan B met all the criteria for an over-the-counter drug, including the requirements that users could understand instructions and use it properly without a doctor's guidance.
"As far as I was concerned, all the evidence presented to the committee, and we got a lot of it, ...
was fully consistent with those requirements," he said.
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