The Food and Drug Administration said the science backs Teva’s application to make the "morning after" pill available to all women, no matter what age, as an over-the-counter medication without a prescription.
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, in a letter to FDA Commissioner Hamburg today, said no dice.
"Based on my review, I have concluded that the data submitted for this product do not establish that prescription dispensing requirements should be eliminated for all ages," she wrote.
Politics rules. Science takes a back seat. All else is commentary.
Merrill Goozner is an award-winning journalist and author of “The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs” who writes regularly at Gooznews.com.