The FDA replaces Tony Blair as Bu$h's Bitch

Taken from:
http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzplan124738768may12,0,5725642.story?coll=ny-business-print

The Manhattan-based Center for Reproductive Rights is in court seeking to force the FDA to approve over-the-counter sales of Plan B. Two FDA officials have resigned in protest over the agency's refusal to allow such sales.

Yesterday, Bonnie Jones, an attorney for the reproductive rights group, told federal Magistrate Viktor Pohorelsky: "It has come to our attention that Mark McClellan at some point had a meeting with someone from the White House about Plan B.

A copy of McClellan's appointment calendar while he was FDA commissioner contains an April 21, 2003 entry: "Conference call w/Jay Lefkowitz re: Plan B submis."

Lefkowitz, popular with conservative groups, is the former deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy and now serves as special envoy on human rights in North Korea.

The entry appears to refer to an application for non-prescription sales submitted to the FDA a few days earlier by Women's Capital Corp., which then owned Plan B. Barr Laboratories of Pomona, N.Y., later bought the company.

Jones was in court seeking to obtain deleted FDA e-mails as well as permission to depose five agency officials who favored non-prescription Plan B sales. Assistant U.S. Attorney Franklin Amanat asked Pohorelsky to block the depositions; the judge refused and did not rule on the e-mail request.

Another former FDA commissioner, Lester Crawford, recently refused to be deposed; his attorney said he would have to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

Crawford is expected to testify on May 24.
McClellan is scheduled to testify in Washington, D.C., on June 13.