Medical News Today reports that the lawsuit by the Center for Reproductive Rights against the FDA to force OTC sales of “Plan B” emergency contraception – against the FDA’s lengthy stalling tactics – can continue. The Bush administration had argued that the Center had no standing to file suit (i.e., it wasn’t a pregnant woman), but:

[Federal Judge Edward] Korman disagreed with Amanat, saying, “There’s a serious issue here as to whether [FDA is] acting in good faith”

This suit is separate from an attempt on the part of the Wisconsin Attorney General to force the FDA to release Plan B under a different legal theory.

The legal issues surrounding this case are somewhat muddled – whether anyone can sue the government because it is running inefficiently, without a showing of direct harm, is a novel question. (Surely the FDA’s behavior in this case has been execrable, but it makes equal sense to, say, sue the Post Office for being slow, sue the EPA for being useless, and sue NASA for constantly blowing up their own rockets. Citizens have an interest in seeing those agencies perform their duties conscientiously and effectively, just as they do with the FDA – so why cannot we sue them all?) However the legal issue falls out, though, the country does have a huge stake in not having its science-based policy-making apparatus corrupted by ideological or religious zealots. There are avenues for inserting political values into science-related policy, but to have the underlying science itself distorted, or simply swept aside as in the case of Plan B, leaves the community with no protection against patent dangers that require careful and accurate evaluation.

Time and again the Bush administration has not merely ignored scientific fact, but deliberately poisoned science itself, on the issues of globabl warming, pollution, reproductive health, forestry management, endangered species protection, toxic waste, and almost anything you can name. They have lent the weight of the government itself to an entrenched assault on factual reality by the religious right wing and the corporate world – the battle to invalidate science so as to avoid accountability for the scientifically-provable harms they cause with their values and policies, or the scientific falseness of their beliefs. (Michael Behe testified in the “intelligent design” schoolbook trial that “science” does not require a focus on natural phenomena – that it could embrace astrology or . . . oh, say . . . religion as well as confirmable facts. The Kansas state school board almost immediately thereafter redefined science in precisely this way. This is the intellectual standard to which the ideological right adheres.) The greatest incursion has been in the area of sexual health policy, where not merely misguided policies such as “abstinence only”, but sheer distortion of fact regarding sexual and reproductive issues, permeates Bush administration policy-making. Judge Korman grossly understates the issue: there is little question that the FDA has not been acting in good faith on Plan B, but has been carrying out a calculated campaign of obfuscation and foot-dragging – including an outright double-cross on its promise to two Senators that action would be forthcoming on the certification – for a period of years.

Whether lawsuits like this one are the appropriate resolution of this case, some resolution is necessary. Whatever policies and values the incumbent administration may bring to government, the country has a right to expect its governmental bodies will act fairly, professionally, and in a forthright manner – that they will not lie to citizens or other members of government, falsify or distort the factual basis on which policy is made, or run roughshod over their own operational procedures (or the Constitution, it should pointedly be noted in respect of many Bush policies) to ensure the outcome they unilaterally prefer.