In an editorial that ran on 21 Dec 2011, the major scientific journal Nature took the president to task for breaking his word about letting politics interfere with scientific decisions when he overruled the FDA plan to sell a morning after contraceptive over the counter.
"President Barack Obama's stance on an emergency contraceptive betrays his promised principles of scientific integrity and sets a troubling precedent for political interference in 'inconvenient' science." More of the editorial below.
"In the opening months of his administration, US President Barack Obama gathered scientists in the grand East Room of the White House to promise that things would be different on his watch. The president was there to sign a new memo on scientific integrity that directed agency heads not to meddle in the decisions of their scientific staff."
"In his speech, Obama pledged that his ambition was “about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient — especially when it's inconvenient”.
"Yet events earlier this month saw Obama demonstrate a blatant betrayal of these principles, when he defended a decision by Kathleen Sebelius, US secretary of health and human services, to override a drug approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“What is most infuriating is the casual jettisoning of careful evidence on this contraceptive's safety.”
Scientific staff at the drug-regulatory agency, including paediatricians, obstetricians and gynaecologists, reached a key determination earlier this year involving Plan B One-Step (levonorgestrel), a single-dose 'morning-after' contraceptive pill. They concluded that it is safe and effective for girls younger than 17 years of age without the currently required prescription — and that these girls could use it correctly without a physician's help."
...FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg put it earlier this month: “There is adequate and reasonable, well-supported, and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential.”
"So much for science. One day after Sebelius announced that she was overruling the agency and denying over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill to females under 17, Obama, questioned by a reporter, said that he agreed with her decision..."
"It certainly is inconvenient, on the cusp of an election year, in what is at heart a deeply conservative country, to acknowledge that young adolescents can and do have sex, and that they may not have thought out the potential consequences in advance. So inconvenient, apparently, that the work of the scientists, who spent long hours weighing risks and benefits for the public good, must be thrown under a bus."
"Most troubling of all is that Obama has set a precedent for overriding science. Sebelius's trampling of a drug decision by the FDA is the first in living memory. If it is acceptable for her to override the agency for this year's reasons of political convenience — or, for that matter, for reasons of heartfelt belief — what politically loaded drugs will next come under the axe?"
So there you have it. To snuggle up to Catholics and Fundies (who aren't going to vote for him anyway), the president sold out another one of his principles. What a country!