Susan F. Wood, who gave up the FDA compared to Plan B, dies at the age of 66

Susan F. Wood, an expert for the health of women who resigned from the protest with the food and second administration in 2005, accusing the agency of Knockling under politics, without confirming sales without the prescription of the morning pill known as Plan B, died on January 17 at her home in London. She was 66 years aged.

The reason was multi -stone glioma, brain cancer, said Richard Payne, her husband.

Dr. Wood was an assistant to the Commissioner for Women’s Health in the FDA during the presidency of George W. Bush, when Plan B, the form of emergency contraception, became an inflammatory point in abortion wars.

The FDA advisory panel voted on 28-0 in 2003 that the pill was sheltered for non-prescription. But the agency’s older officials disregarded the precedent and refused to approve without a prescription sales.

Plan B contains a high level of progestin, a hormone found in ordinary contraceptive tablets, and the agency scientists considered it contraception. But opponents of abortion argued that its operate was tantamount to ending pregnancy. They also warned that ready access would lead to a solution by teenagers, although no data supported this claim.

Dr. Wood and others believed that the available emergency contraception without a prescription would mean less unwanted pregnancies and less abortion.

In August 2005, the FDA Commissioner, Lester M. Crawford, announced that the agency could not decide whether to allow without a prescription to operate plan B and did not expect soon.

Dr. Wood blamed the policy for dragging the agency’s feet and gave up her job, which she performed for five years. In E -Mail, she wrote to staff that she could no longer remain “when scientific and clinical evidence, fully assessed and recommended for approval by professional staff, was repealed.”

The report later by the Government Bureau of Responsibility, an impartial investigating arm of the Congress, it was found that the highest agency officials rejected over -the -counter sales, even before the scientific plan was reviewed by B. Officials questioned the arrangements.

Dr. Wood turned to the American Association for Advancement of Science in 2006, where she received a standing ovation. She criticized the FDA for ignoring science because “social conservatives have an extremely excessive influence.”

Susan Franklin Wood was born on November 5, 1958 in Jacksonville, Florida, one of four children of Dr. Jonathan Wood, surgeon and Betty (Dorscheid) Wood, who managed the house.

She graduated from the Episcopal School of Jacksonville in 1976 and Southwestern in Memphis (now Rhodes College) in 1980. After obtaining a doctorate. In biology at the University of Boston in 1989, she transferred its concentration to health policy.

In 1990, she received a scholarship as a scientific advisor at the Congress Club for Women, a bilateral group. Within five years, Capitol Hill helped press the rules to augment women’s representation in clinical trials and expand the research of breast cancer, infertility and contraception.

In 1995, she became a politics director at the Women’s Health Office, part of the Health and Social Welfare Department. She joined the FDA in 2000 to direct the Women’s Health Department.

Opposes to the approval of Plan B for over -the -counter sales did not cause whether it should be available to younger teenagers. The drug manufacturer, Barr Laboratories, proposed to limit sales to people 16 and more.

The senior FDA official told Dr. Wood that the medicine was on the right track to win permission to failure for those 17 and the elders, Dr. Wood remembered oral history that she recorded for the agency in 2019.

“I heard it with my own diminutive ears,” she said. “And everyone was waiting for the decision to leave in silence.”

“But,” she added, “the decision never came out.”

On Friday afternoon, Dr. Crawford announced that limiting the age for over -the -counter sales will be complex to manage pharmacies. The problem, he said, required more studies. In the meantime, the operate of without a prescription has not been approved for anyone.

Dr. Wood gave up next Tuesday. She expected her decision to be mostly unnoticed. Instead, the information media immediately informed about it.

“It ended up spent the next eight months, just just traveling and talking about it,” she said. “It affected the perception of whether you can trust the government at that time.”

In 2006, Dr. Wood joined the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University as a research professor. She became a full professor in 2017 and was the director of the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health there. She and her husband moved to the island of Mull in Scotland in 2017, with the second residence in London; She still taught remotely until she retired in 2022.

In addition to her husband, her daughter, Bettie Wood Payne, survived.

Contretmpsps has finally disappeared compared to Plan B, overshadowed by more controversial episodes of abortion policy. Plan B finally won the approval without a prescription in 2013, although some states allow pharmacists to refuse to publish it.

In 2019, Dr. Wood said that he is afraid that straightforward access to the morning pill would be a “perilous, radical, crazy” thing that turned out to be exaggerated. “

“When he is without a prescription, it’s nothing massive,” she said. “And, for sure it happened: it’s nothing massive.”