PZ Myers. 2004 Nov 05. I'm sure this will inspire people to pray. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/im_sure_this_will_inspire_people_to_pray/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 01.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Friday, November 05, 2004
I'm sure this will inspire people to pray
A quiet battle is raging over the Bush Administration's plan to appoint a scantily credentialed doctor, whose writings include a book titled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now, to head an influential Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel on women's health policy. Sources tell Time that the agency's choice for the advisory panel is Dr. W. David Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist who also wrote, with his wife Linda, Stress and the Woman's Body, which puts "an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life" and recommends specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome. Though his resume describes Hager as a University of Kentucky professor, a university official says Hager's appointment is part time and voluntary and involves working with interns at Lexington's Central Baptist Hospital, not the university itself. In his private practice, two sources familiar with it say, Hager refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. Hager did not return several calls for comment.
How could such a ghastly incompetent be in the running for this job?
Hager was chosen for the post by FDA senior associate commissioner Linda Arey Skladany, a former drug-industry lobbyist with longstanding ties to the Bush family.
Jesus, check. Drug-industry lobbyist, check. Palsy-walsy with the Bushes, check. Sounds like a Bush appointment, alright: religion, money, and croneyism.
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Paul:
This sort of nonsensical appointment of a fundamentalist wackjob to a FDA position is supposed to surprise me how, exactly?
In the wake of Dubya's highly irritating (but sadly, unsurprising) re-election, it's no real shock that the nutbars he intends to foist on us are going to start coming out of the woodwork. After all, keeping the yo-yos and "personal friends" (read: sycophants)under wraps until after the victory is achieved is a long-standing strategy of political hacks the world over.#: Posted by on 11/05 at 07:39 PM -
Point of information (not in defense of Bush or Hager): Actually, the original article dates from Oct 2002, and Hager is on the committee (but not chair). Snopes <a href="http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/hager.htm>has the details</a>.
#: Posted by John M. Lynch on 11/05 at 07:43 PM
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As the saying goes, "You cant make this stuff up".
And just out of the mouth of Dan Rather a story about TX approving a Health textbook only after it specifically stated that marriage is between a man and a woman.
What is next? ... religion is only for Christians.#: Posted by on 11/05 at 08:03 PM -
religion is only for Christians.
They can have it. - Ick. Incidentally, I wouldn't think the anti-contraceptive forces would necessarily be the natural allies of Big Pharma. Not prescribing BCP for large numbers of people would cut into the revenue stream, wouldn't it?
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You can find some more details on Hager, and the the context in which he came up in a piece I wrote last year.
#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 11/05 at 09:10 PM
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oops: didn't seem to like an URL with an ampersand in it. Here's the TinyURL version.
#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 11/05 at 09:17 PM
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Stacy said:
Not prescribing BCP for large numbers of people would cut into the revenue stream, wouldn’t it?
Unfortunately, no. Pharmaceutical companies make most of thier money off of those things that they have a proprietary claim to and little off of those things that can be made genercally. Biggest revenue streems are had from those newly developed drugs, like the one to get rid of toe nail fungus. - Can't spell for the life of me today.
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Well, it does make me want to pray for a return to sanity in this country
#: Posted by on 11/05 at 10:12 PM
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DarkSyde,
They can have it.
Amen to that!#: Posted by on 11/05 at 11:19 PM -
mattH,
Right you are about the focus on low profit generic drugs vs. high profit 'fashion' treatments. But, Stacy has a point that Pharma is dependent on the reliable revenue streams that government subsidy/insurance creates for them. If anyone pushed for real open market healthcare you can bet Pharma and Insurance companies would put a stop to it. They want market plus prices and no risk. A real open market has risk. Ironic that Canadian drug producers would have an advantage selling directly to the US if we opened the border since they have the advantage of not carrying the healthcare/insurance costs of their workers directly.#: Posted by on 11/05 at 11:28 PM -
We are not all that dumb. It is time we fight back. The Neo-Conservs are a viral cancer on this land.
#: Posted by on 11/06 at 01:24 AM
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/opinion/06kristof.html?th
And from the SCLM, ... roll over and play dead. I'm with Lago ...#: Posted by on 11/06 at 09:16 AM -
The Library at Alexandria is not happening again. This time, we fight back with everything we have.
#: Posted by on 11/06 at 09:26 AM
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Lago,
Thanks for that little prompt to refresh and expand our knowledge, and learn a little more history and archaeology.
What an appropriate icon for our struggle against the forces of superstition and ignorance.#: Posted by on 11/06 at 09:46 AM -
Kristof's column is wron from the outset. He's implying that the Republican win was based on it's appeal to the center, primarily through it;'s religious agenda, and that Democras must do the same. All evidence so far points to the opposite, and the fact that they did a better job of motivating their base, primarily through ideological issues at the polls.
Ignore Kristof. If you look at his previous column, he's talking about trying to get Idaho into the Democtratic fold. Talk about coastal elites. This is a state that goes to the republicans to a very high degree. In fact, the Dems didn't even have a challenger for Senate this year. Altering the few things that he suggests is not going to bring them over. He's clueless. -
Furthermore, look at his points in this more recent column.
Accept that today, gun control is a nonstarter. Instead of trying to curb guns, try to reduce gun deaths through better rules on licensing and storage, and on safety devices like trigger locks.
He doesn't get that 'better rules on licensing and storage' is seen by most who vote on gun rights as gun control, not some benign action.
Pick battles of substance, not symbolism. The battle over Georgia's Confederate flag cost Roy Barnes his governorship and perhaps Max Cleland his Senate seat, but didn't help one working mother or jobless worker. It was a gift to Republicans.
Ideology is how the Republicans win, not economic issues. Every time that a complex issue is brought up, it can be dismissed, especially when a Dem tries to simplify it and then admitts that it is complex. We have to develop our own ideology, consistent with the values of the people we are trying to get out. Simply abandoning them isn't going to work.
Hold your nose and work with President Bush as much as you can because it's lethal to be portrayed as obstructionists. Sure, block another Clarence Thomas, but here's a rule of thumb: if an otherwise qualified Supreme Court nominee would turn the clock back 10 years, approve; back 25 years, vote no; back a half-century, filibuster.
And bending over backwards after 2001 helped how? Something is going to be found to portray them as a an obstructionist. I suggest they earn the distinction, intelligently, and in ways that can be held up as postitives.
Kristof is an idiot. No one should listen to him. -
MattH,
You last line sums it up nicely.
I had not seen his Idaho idea. I work in Idaho (live in the semi blue territory to the West). Democrats that win elections in Idaho are barely worthy of the name unless it is a state legislative seat from the center of Boise. Even Moscow, which is considered by the wingnuts around here to be a hotbed of Socialism, cant muster up the steam to beat back the Republicans.#: Posted by on 11/06 at 02:58 PM -
I understand. I live in the "pretty, great" Republican state to the south and east. Here, the Republicans have a supermajority in the House. They decide everything in closed-door committee meetings to circumvent the open door laws and then vote the results in public with no real debate. The only way a Democrat ever gets anything into law is to propose something, have it defeated, then the next session a Republican will take the identical idea, propose the same law, and get it passed, and not even invite the Dem on for co-sponsorship. Sickening. And they get away with it every time.
Damn, I've got to move, at least to SLC. -
Re: "TX approving a Health textbook only after it specifically stated that marriage is between a man and a woman."
That would have been pushed through by Terri Leo, my SBOE representative. She also worked with the Discovery Institute to try to add bogus "weaknesses" of evolutionary theory to the biology textbooks last year.#: Posted by on 11/07 at 09:44 PM -
mattH,
Apparently the Utah and Idaho legislatures play from the same book.#: Posted by on 11/07 at 10:16 PM