The mishandling of Plan B (the morning after-pill, emergency contraception, take your pick of names) at the FDA is the stuff that legends are made of. Their refusal to permit it to become available over the counter, and thus possibly preventing thousands of accidental pregnancies from occuring, is truly one of their darkest moments.

One FDA official has already resigned in protest of their treatment of Plan B. And now a second one bites the dust, for the same reason. The FDA is supposed to be a scientific organization with the mission of assuring food and drug safety, and acting in the best interest of the consumer. Not a dog and pony show.

Dr. Frank Davidoff, editor emeritus of the Annals of Internal Medicine, said the agency is ignoring science in favor of politics in delaying approval of the drug for over-the-counter sales.

He was a member of the FDA’s Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee when it voted to approve Plan B for over-the-counter sales in 2003, and had served as a consultant to the committee since his term ended earlier this year.

Davidoff is the second person to publicly resign over Plan B. In late August, the top women’s health official at FDA, Susan Wood, also resigned in protest. Former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford has also since resigned.

The reasons for Crawford’s abrupt resignation are yet to be determined, but he deliberately lied about it in order to get confirmed as commissioner. He promised to reach a decision on it by a certain date, but as soon as he had his confirmation in his hot little hands, he reneged on his promise.

Anyway, the FDA is still floundering around when it comes to Plan B. But maybe that’s the plan. All of the competent and ethical people will resign in protest, and then they can fill their ranks with political appointees (no matter whether or not they have any experience in science or medicine), and they can make decisions based on neo-conserative interpretations from the Bible. They can change their name to the Food and Drug Neo-Biblical Association. The FDNBA. Catchy name, huh.

Mercury News

My comments are back on. So if you have something you’d like to share and you’re not a spammer, then please feel free to speak your mind. My blog has been updated, so it will be easier for me to filter out spammers and have them deleted automatically, as well as deleting the ones who slip through.

So, comments are welcome. Spammers are not.

Now this is the kind of news we like to hear. Utah says progress has been made in dealing with their nursing shortage. Have more nurses come to work there, one will ask?

Nurses in Utah are still in short supply, but gains have been made since legislators approved funding to address the shortage earlier this year, members of the Health and Human Services Interim Committee learned Wednesday.

Oh, for a moment I thought they had actually hired real, true to life nurses. But they’ve gotten funding. And let me guess, the funds aren’t going to be used to raise nurses’ salaries in the state, which might actually attract someone.

State colleges and universities have hired eight new faculty members and accepted 100 new nursing students since they began receiving funds in July, said David Gessel, vice president of government relations with the Utah Hospitals and Health Systems Association.

The hospital association has pledged $1 million per year over the next five years to help alleviate the nursing shortage. Lawmakers in the 2005 legislative session agreed to match the amount with $2 million — $1.3 million in ongoing funds, $500,000 in one-time funding and $200,000 to applied technology centers.

Now you know if the hospital association is donating money, it is surely not to the nurses benefit. They would love for schools to mass produce nurses and create a glut. Then the job market would shrink, salaries and benefits would shrink and they could return to them good old days when nurses made less money than a factory worker or secretary. And while there’s nothing wrong with hiring more faculty–as I’ve said over and over again, stuffing students into nursing programs does not equal more nurses filling empty slots. The example of NY State is one that everyone should look at. Plenty of nurses have graduated, but they are vanishing into the ether at a rapid rate.

This particular article about Utah does note that the state has 18,000 registered nurses but only 14, 500 are practicing. Why is that? Some may be taking a leave to care for small children and so on, and plan to return at some point, but others may have left for good. That’s 3500 potential nurses for the job pool. Has anybody bothered to find out why they are no longer working? Could it be that no one really wants to know?

The article also says nothing about the attrition rate at nursing schools in Utah, or the turnover rates at local hospitals. So once again, you read this stuff about the miracles of funding and factory farmed nursing, and heave a sigh.

Anyway, this article on late great nursing shortage and its miraculous solution can be found at Deseretnews.com