Health care law (including regulatory and compliance issues, public health law, medical ethics, and life sciences), with digressions into constitutional law, statutory interpretation, poetry, and other things that matter
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
FDA, Barr Pharmaceuticals, reach accord over Plan B contraceptive sales
In Wednesday's paper, the NY Times reports that the FDA and the manufacturer of the Plan B contraceptive have reached an agreement that may lead to OTC sales (at least to customers 18 years of age and up; under-18's will still need a prescription) within weeks. The story doesn't refer to an earlier report that the FDA offered the deal to Barr last week, on the eve of hearings on the nomination of acting Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach, apparently in response to the announced opposition of Sen. Hillary Clinton and other Senate Dems, who had vowed to delay a vote on the nomination until the FDA cleared its apparently unprecedented derailing of the OTC application. Pro-life groups regard the drug as an abortifacient, despite FDA's official classification of Barr's Plan B drug as an emergency contraceptive, so we can expect this latest development to produce the usual ripple effect of abortion politics.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment