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Dec. 1st, 2005
Broadway is closed off tonight, so people can dance Abbots Bromley in the street and Santa Claus can play the saxophone. It's the Sort Of Victorian Or Something Christmas Celebration downtown; all the shops are open late and hung with festive lights, card tables are set up to sell hot chocolate and mulled cider, various musical groups have established little sound bubbles to wander between. We did find one timid cluster of pseudo-Victorians in costume, huddled together and singing a perfectly lovely four-part Christmas carol, but unfortunately they were drowned out by the more amplified (and less talented) groups. I do have such a weakness for cute girls in Victorian dresses, especially when they are singing. Oh, fluttery flutter.
Just in case I'd built up a dangerous excess of Christmas cheer, I continued north (without![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
adfamiliares, who went home to work) to campus to catch a lecture by Fran Hawthorne on the Religious Right's influence on the FDA. She didn't tell me much I didn't know, and she popped her P's in the mike, but she did mention Estes Kefauver, so she earns points there. Her thrust was: the FDA is required by law to balance a drug's effectiveness versus its side effects; there is nothing in its mandate to permit it to consider social issues, but that's exactly what the Religious Right has been (successfully) pressuring it to do. I'm sure most of you know what's been going on with RU-486 and Plan B; beyond that, the first stem cell drug is going up for approval next year, and there's a great HPV vaccine that may not get approved because it might encourage minors to have sex. (Heaven knows they wouldn't have sex otherwise.) Mostly the lecture made me that much grumblier about Bush (who, incidentally, fired the head of the FDA for recommending approval of RU-486). It inspired me to learn a little more about the FDA and the DEA; I'd never really thought to wonder why we need both of them.
Speaking of George W., the headline of the New York Post today, in three-inch letters, was TOTAL VICTORY! See, Bush, in a speech yesterday, promised victory in Iraq. Eventually. Probably. Fortunately, we have the Post to tell us about it, clearly, with no chance of giving the wrong impression. Perhaps they should make a banner, maybe hang it from an aircraft carrier somewhere...
Just in case I'd built up a dangerous excess of Christmas cheer, I continued north (without
adfamiliares, who went home to work) to campus to catch a lecture by Fran Hawthorne on the Religious Right's influence on the FDA. She didn't tell me much I didn't know, and she popped her P's in the mike, but she did mention Estes Kefauver, so she earns points there. Her thrust was: the FDA is required by law to balance a drug's effectiveness versus its side effects; there is nothing in its mandate to permit it to consider social issues, but that's exactly what the Religious Right has been (successfully) pressuring it to do. I'm sure most of you know what's been going on with RU-486 and Plan B; beyond that, the first stem cell drug is going up for approval next year, and there's a great HPV vaccine that may not get approved because it might encourage minors to have sex. (Heaven knows they wouldn't have sex otherwise.) Mostly the lecture made me that much grumblier about Bush (who, incidentally, fired the head of the FDA for recommending approval of RU-486). It inspired me to learn a little more about the FDA and the DEA; I'd never really thought to wonder why we need both of them.Speaking of George W., the headline of the New York Post today, in three-inch letters, was TOTAL VICTORY! See, Bush, in a speech yesterday, promised victory in Iraq. Eventually. Probably. Fortunately, we have the Post to tell us about it, clearly, with no chance of giving the wrong impression. Perhaps they should make a banner, maybe hang it from an aircraft carrier somewhere...
