Posts tagged with 'FDA'
Weekly Pulse: Steve King’s Suicide Pact, Sin Taxes, and the Avastin Controversy
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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is urging Republicans to swear a “blood oath” to shut down the U.S. government until health care reform is repealed.
King is one of an growing number of Republicans who say that, if the GOP takes over congress this fall, they will hold up every appropriations bill until the Affordable Care Act is repealed, as Steve Benen reports in the Washington Monthly. Brian Beutler of TPM explains how this would actually work.
Blood oath or suicide pact?
Benen thinks the hardliners are crazy enough to actually follow through—They’ve done it before. In 1995, the Republicans shut down the federal government because then-president Bill Clinton refused to sign off on Congress’s radical plan to slash Medicare and other social spending. Several hundred thousand federal employees were furloughed because there was no money to pay their salaries and every aspect of the economy suffered, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Rand Paul, DIY Ophthalmologist
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Rand Paul, the Republican senate candidate in Kentucky, is a freewheeling libertarian. Instead of getting some fancy board-certification as an ophthalmologist, Paul decided to “go Galt” and make up his own credentials. Paul founded the National Board of Ophthalmology, ostensibly to certify doctors as qualified eye specialists.
The NBO is run out of Paul’s home in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Paul is the president, is wife is the vice president, and her father Hilton Ashby is the organization’s secretary. Normally medical boards sponsor rigorous exams to ensure the highest professional standards in their respective specialties. “I can’t tell you what the organization does,” Ashby told TPM.
It takes a rugged individualist eye doctor to found an entire medical board just for himself and a few friends. When you think about it, it’s kind of hypocritical of Paul to hold a state-approved medical license. If he were a true libertarian he’d found his own medical board and let the free market decide who’s a “real doctor.” (more…)
Weekly Pulse: FACE the Facts
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
In 1993, anti-choice extremists murdered a doctor, burned 12 buildings, set off a bomb, and blockaded 66 abortion clinics. The following year, President Bill Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. FACE made it a federal crime to obstruct a clinic or intimidate patients and providers.
Wendy Norris of RH Reality Check reports that, in the intervening 16 years, the Justice Department has only prosecuted 19 civil and 45 criminal cases under FACE. Abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was assassinated last year by a hardcore clinic protester, and many asked if the FACE Act was being enforced. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: The Pill at 50 and Oklahoma’s Extreme Ultrasound Law
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Fifty years ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first birth control pill. Needless to say, the repercussions of this medical and public policy breakthrough are still being felt today.
Catherine Epstein of the Women’s Media Center thinks it’s significant that we celebrate the date a U.S. government agency approved the Pill, as opposed to the anniversary of its invention. The Pill has been at the center of a power struggle from the very beginning:
The pill has been under ideological fire since the first tiny tablet hit a woman’s palm. And the impact it’s had on women’s autonomy and freedom has been – as decades have passed – nearly equal to the fear (and subsequent restriction) it’s instilled in those who believe in curtailing reproductive rights. (more…)
