THE PROLIFER VS. THE PROFILER:

Faith versus science? (Ellen Goodman, 10/20/2002, Boston Globe)

[T]he question in the Hager flap is not whether religion is a disqualification for serving in society. It's whether belonging to the religious right is prerequisite for serving on anything to do with reproduction. Who's doing the religious profiling?

In theory, the FDA advisory committee is for research wonks, not ideologues. This is supposedly the place for facts. This is where the safety and effectiveness of drugs are debated, not the morals.

At one time, Hager said, ''The fact that I'm a person of faith does not deter me from also being a person of science.'' At another time, he said it was dangerous to compartmentalize life into ''categories of Christian truth and secular truth.'' Can Hager's opponents separate his faith from his science? Can he?

Emergency contraception and RU-486 are both slated to be back before the committee. We already know that this would-be adviser opposes emergency contraception on moral grounds. Will that skew his judgment about whether it's safe to sell over the counter?

As for RU-486 or mifepristone, Hager's not just personally opposed to the ''abortion pill.'' Last August he helped the Christian Medical Association produce a ''citizens' petition'' asking the FDA to take it off the market. They cited new ''evidence'' of its dangers to women that was neither new nor evidence. Today mifepristone is not only used for early abortions and other treatments but it's on the FDA's fast track for use as an antipsychotic, especially for post-partum depression. Anyone wonder why Hager's, um, profile, is high?

''Anyone who can say RU-486 is dangerous and should be overturned is ignoring the science,'' says Pearson.

Setting aside for a moment Ms Goodman's claim that she's not profiling the religious, even though she puts quotation marks around the seemingly innocuous phrase "citizens's petition"--would an application from NOW or NARAL have earned similar implied skepticism?--it seems necessary to point out what one would have thought an obvious fact: any abortificant is dangerous, in fact deadly, by its very nature. That neither Ms Goodman nor this Pearson character even take into consideration the embryo or fetus that is destroyed by RU-486 amply demonstrates who here is blinded by ideology. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 20, 2002 11:30 PM