New acting FDA commissioner

Women's Group Warns about Von Eschenbach's Appointment as Acting FDA Commissioner

"Ladies, take cover! Andrew Von Eschenbach was named acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday," warned Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer. "The FDA had a commissioner who could resist political pressure. His abrupt resignation after two months on the job creates the impression that the Bush Administration couldn't take the heat from the abortion and the pharmaceutical industries. The industries want Plan B (morning-after pill) made available for over-the-counter sales."

"Von Eschenbach is no friend of women," warned Malec, a cancer survivor.  "He's a friend of the anti-woman abortion and pharmaceutical industries."

Plan B is a high dose of oral contraceptives.  The World Health Organization recognizes combined oral contraceptives as carcinogenic. 1 Oral contraceptives contain steroidal estrogens, which the U.S. Department of Health and Services recognizes as a carcinogen. 2

"Von Eschenbach, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), can be relied upon to put in the 'political fix' for business interests, just as he and his subordinates did with their phony workshop on the abortion-cancer link," asserted Malec.

The workshop was billed as a "comprehensive" examination of a half-century of research linking abortion with increased breast cancer risk. 3 In truth, it was a one-sided presentation intended to wipe out the idea in the public mind that abortion is unsafe.

Professor Joel Brind's paper reported on the NCI's history of bias and misinformation involving abortion-cancer research. Brind J. The abortion-breast cancer connection. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly Summer 2005; p. 303-329.

"Does this administration care that breast cancer kills 40,000 American women yearly?" asked Malec.  "Does it possess the courage to recognize the abortion-cancer link?  Will it fold on Plan B? Why do politicians, like Hillary Clinton, want women on steroidal estrogens?"

Von Eschenbach will go down in history next to Clarence 'Pete' Little. Little was a leader of the ACS and the NCI in the 1950's when the Tobacco Industry Research Committee hired him to be their spokesperson.

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women's organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.

• 1. Press Release No. 167, "IARC Monographs Programme Finds Combined Estrogen-Progestogen Contraceptives (the "pill") and Menopausal Therapy Are Carcinogenic to Humans," World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer, July 29, 2005. See http://www.iarc.fr/ENG/Press_Releases/pr167a.html.
• 2. See December 11, 2002 press release for the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
• 3. "Early Reproductive Events and Cancer Workshop," February 2003.