Role in Center For Reproductive Rights Lawsuit
During McClellan's tenure as Commissioner of the FDA, the makers of Plan B emergency contraception applied for over-the-counter status.
In May 2004, FDA commissioner Steven Galson rejected over-the-counter status for Plan B. The Center for Reproductive Rights then filed a lawsuit, and deposed Dr John Jenkins, director of the FDA's Office of New Drugs. Jenkins alleges that he learned in early 2004 that McClellan, then Commissioner of the FDA, had decided against approval even before the staff could complete their analysis. "I think many of us were very concerned that there were policy or political issues that came to play in the decision," Jenkins stated. He later said he did not know if anyone outside FDA influenced the decision.
McClellan said in his deposition that he was not involved in the decision to reject the initial Plan B application for non-prescription sales; he left the FDA in February 2004 to head the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. He also said that he was never told by anyone higher up in the Bush administration what to do about the application, although he did say that he "briefed" two White House domestic-policy advisors. The litigation is ongoing; no finding has been made for either side.
Read more about this topic: Mark McClellan
Famous quotes containing the words role in, role, center, reproductive and/or rights:
“My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“Always and everywhere children take an active role in the construction and acquisition of learning and understanding. To learn is a satisfying experience, but also, as the psychologist Nelson Goodman tells us, to understand is to experience desire, drama, and conquest.”
—Carolyn Edwards (20th century)
“This is a strange little complacent country, in many ways a U.S.A. in miniature but of course nearer the center of disturbance!”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“The blind conviction that we have to do something about other people’s reproductive behaviour, and that we may have to do it whether they like it or not, derives from the assumption that the world belongs to us, who have so expertly depleted its resources, rather than to them, who have not.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Service ... is love in action, love “made flesh”; service is the body, the incarnation of love. Love is the impetus, service the act, and creativity the result with many by-products.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 3 (1962)