Susan F. Wood, an expert of female health that has resigned for protest of the food and drug Administration in 2005, accusing the Knuckling agency under politics not approving the counter sales of the morning pill known as Piano B, is died on January 17th in his house in London. He was 66 years old.
The cause was the multifaceted cerebral glooblastoma, said Richard Payne, her husband.
Dr. Wood was assistant commissioner for women’s health at the FDA during the presidency of George W. Bush when plan B, a form of emergency contraception, became a flash point in the abortion wars.
A consultative panel of the FDA voted 28-0 in 2003 that the pill was sure for the non-prescription use. But high officials of the agency have ignored the previous one and refused to approve the counter sales.
Plan B contains high levels of progestin, a hormone present in normal birth control pills and agencies of the agencies have considered it contraceptive. But abortion opponents claimed that its use was equivalent to ending pregnancy. They also warned that ready access would lead to promiscuous behavior by teenagers, although no data supported this statement.
Dr. Wood and others believed that having an emergency contraception available without prescription meant less unwanted pregnancies and less abortions.
In August 2005, the commissioner of the FDA, Lester M. Crawford, announced that the agency was unable to make a decision whether to authorize the counter use of plan B and did not expect to reach one soon.
Dr. Wood blamed the agency’s dredging policy and resigned from a job he had held for five years. In one and -mail to the staff, he wrote that he could no longer remain “when the scientific and clinical tests, fully evaluated and recommended for the approval by the professional staff here, were canceled”.
A report later that year of the government’s responsibility office, the non -partisan investigative arm of the congress, discovered that the agency’s best officials had rejected the counter sales even before the scientific revision of plan B was completed. The officials contested the results.
Dr. Wood turned to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006 and received a standing ovation. He criticized the FDA for ignoring science because “social conservatories have an extreme excessive influence”.
Susan Franklin Wood was born on November 5, 1958 in Jacksonville, Florida, one of Dr. Jonathan Wood, a surgeon and Betty (Dorscheid) Wood.
She graduated from Jacksonville’s Episcopal School in 1976 and South -West in Memphis (now Rhodes College) in 1980. After obtaining a PhD. In Boston University biology in 1989, he shown his attention to health policy.
In 1990, he received a scholarship as a scientific councilor at the Caucus congress for women’s issues, a bipartisan group. Over five years in Capitol Hill, he helped to push legislation to increase the representation of women in clinical studies and to expand research in breast cancer, infertility and contraception.
In 1995 he became political director in the health office of women, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. He joined the FDA in 2000 to guide the women’s health department.
Objections to the approval of plan B for the counter sales reset that they must be available for younger teenagers. The manufacturer, Barr Laboratories, proposed to limit sales to people from 16 years of age.
A high FDA official told Dr. Wood that the drug was on the right way to win non -prescription approval for the 17 years and more, Dr. Wood recalled in an oral story that he recorded for the agency In 2019.
“I heard it with my small ears,” he said. “And everyone was waiting for the decision to come out silently.”
“But” he added, “the decision never came out.”
A Friday afternoon, Dr. Crawford announced that a limitation of age for over -the -counter sales would be difficult to manage for pharmacies. The problem, he said, needed more studies. In the meantime, the use of non -prescription has not been approved for anyone.
Dr. Wood left the next Tuesday. He expected his decision to pass mostly unnoticed. Instead, the media reported immediately.
“I ended up spending the next eight months just traveling and talking about this,” he said. “He influenced the perception of the fact that you can trust the government at that moment.”
In 2006, Dr. Wood joined the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University as a research professor. She became a complete professor in 2017 and directed the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health there. She and her husband moved to Mull’s island in Scotland in 2017, with a second residence in London; He continued to teach remotely until he retired in 2022.
In addition to her husband, she survived a daughter, Bettie Wood Payne.
Contracts on plan B are faded, obscured by more controversial episodes of abortion policy. Plan B has finally won over the counter approval in 2013, although some states allow pharmacists to refuse it to dispense it.
In 2019, Dr. Wood said that the fears that easy access to a morning pill later would be a “dangerous, radical, crazy thing” turned out to be too bloody.
“Once he is at the counter, it’s not a big problem,” he said. “And, quite safe, that’s what happened. It is not a big problem. “