Governed by the Irrational. (February 10, 2006)

    The debate and the public pronouncements by many of our federal parliamentarians considering the transfer of decision making regarding the availability of the abortion inducing drug RU486 (Mifepristone, a synthetic steroid, i.e. a substituted 19-nor steroid C₂₉H₃₅NO₂) from the Federal Minister for Health and Ageing of the day, to the Therapeutic Good Administration has produced a torrent of irrational statements which brings into serious question their fitness to govern a nation of just over 20 million individuals with a 2005 Gross Domestic Product of ~$870 billion.

Structural formula of Mifepristone (RU486)

The "Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is a unit of the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. The TGA carries out a range of assessment and monitoring activities to ensure therapeutic goods available in Australia are of an acceptable standard with the aim of ensuring that the Australian community has access, within a reasonable time, to therapeutic advances."

The Minister for Health and Ageing, Tony Abbott has stated that "there will be no parliament authority over these decisions [regarding the use of RU486] and no democratically elected person will have to answer for them".

That's an interesting comment because this is how the system works:

The Minister for Health and Ageing appoints the members of the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee under subregulation 36 of the Therapeutic Goods Regulations 1990. The Minister must appoint to the Committee six or seven core members and ten to twenty associate members. Of the core members, at least:

• three must be eminent medical practitioners with at least two specialists in clinical medicine; and
• one must be a pharmacologist, or hold a degree in science, specialising in pharmaceutical science.

The associate members must include:

• at least one pharmaceutical chemist with recent manufacturing experience in therapeutic goods; and
• at least one toxicologist; and
• a medical practitioner in general practice.

All associate members have specialist qualifications and experience in fields of medicine complementary to that of the core membership. Associate members are invited by the chair to attend meetings according to the agenda of each meeting.

Mr Abbott is a humbug, and to compound the nonsense the Prime Minister, John Howard, repeats the allegation but inserts the word directly "Important decisions affecting the community should be made by people who are accountable directly to the community."

But the Minister for Health is appointed by the Prime Minister; as the minister he is not directly accountable to the community at large, once every three or six years) he stands in his particular electorate if he gains preselection for re-election. The members of the ADEC are accountable to the Minister for Health and Ageing of the Day. And for a recent demonstration of ministerial power you need look no further than the sacking of the Australian Research Council Board by the then Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson.

Quite apart from any of the other viewpoints put forward by the proponents or  opponents of the bill to transfer authority for licensing RU486 to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the arguments espoused by Mr Abbott and Mr Howard are specious in the extreme.