Quote from MackieMesser:
Consider this nominee. Yeh, sure, he has to keep the right-wing fundamentalist base happy, and that's not easy, but this is just another disgusting example of opening the door wide for the lunatic fringe. He's really hurting his party.
Subject: Bush appointee
Bush has announced his plan to select Dr. W. David
Hager to head up the Food
and Drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive
HealthDrugs Advisory Committee.
The committee hasn't met for more than two years,
during which time its charter
lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration is
tasked with filling all
eleven positions with new members. This position
doesn't require Congressional
approval.
The FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory
Committee makes crucial
decisions on matters relating to drugs used in the
practice of obstetrics,
gynecology and related specialties, including
hormone therapy, contraception,
treatment for infertility, and medical alternatives
to surgical procedures for
sterilization and pregnancy termination.
Dr. Hager's views of reproductive health care are
far outside the
mainstream for reproductive technology. He is a
practicing OB/GYN who
describes himself as "pro-life" and refuses to
prescribe contraceptives to unmarried
women. Hager is the author of As Jesus Cared for
Women: Restoring Women Then
and Now. The book blends biblical accounts of Christ
healing women with case
studies from Hager's practice.
In the book Hager wrote with his wife, Stress and
the Woman's Body, he
suggests that women who suffer from PMS should seek
help from reading the bible and
praying. As an editor and contributing author of The
Reproduction Revolution:
A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality Reproductive
Technologies and the Family,
Hager appears to have endorsed the medically
inaccurate assertion that the
common birth control pill is an abortifacient.
Hager's mission is religiously motivated. He has an
ardent interest in
revoking approval for mifepristone (formerly known
as RU-486) as a safe
and early form of medical abortion. Hagar recently
assisted the Christian
Medical Association in a "citizen's petition" which
calls upon the FDA to revoke
its approval of mifepristone in the name of women's
health.
Hager's desire to overturn mifepristone's approval
on religious grounds
rather than scientific merit would halt the
development of mifepristone
as a treatment for numerous medical conditions
disproportionately
affecting women, including breast cancer, uterine
cancer, uterine fibroid
tumors, psychotic depression, bipolar depression and
Cushing's syndrome.
Women rely on the FDA to ensure their access to safe
and effective drugs
for reproductive health care including products that
prevent pregnancy.
For some women, such as those with certain types of
diabetes and those
undergoing treatment for cancer, pregnancy can be a
life-threatening
condition. We are concerned that Dr. Hager's strong
religious beliefs may
color his assessment of technologies that are
necessary to protect women's lives
or to preserve and promote women's health.
Hager's track record of using religious beliefs to
guide his medical
decision-making makes him a dangerous and
inappropriate candidate to serve as chair of
this committee. Critical drug public policy and
research must not be held
hostage by antiabortion politics. Members of this
important panel should be
appointed on the basis of science and medicine,
rather than politics and religion.
American women deserve no less
