The Food and Drug Administration just issued a warning on RU-486 – the drug used to cause medical abortions – after two women died from secondary infections after taking the pill to end their pregnancies. But the FDA waited until about 27,000 people had died from heart attacks and strokes while taking arthritis drug Vioxx before pulling that drug. Why the discrepancy?

…Would money surprise you? Merck was a big contributor to GOP coffers, and they make sure they hire lobbyists with strong ties to the Bush camp. Meanwhile, RU-486 contributed nothing. The company that produces it is not even American, but French. And that company has been the target of anti-choice forces since the day RU-486 first hit the market.

• Merck was pulling in around $2.5 billion a year from Vioxx sales.
  

• Merck shared some of this drug booty with the Bush re-election campaign and other GOP candidates up for re-election. (In all, drug companies pumped $13 million into various campaign coffers; two-thirds of it went to Republicans.)
  

• The FDA knew for two years that there was hard data showing that Vioxx was killing some of its users, but did nothing.
  

• Once the body count reached 27,000 and became impossible to hide or deny any longer, the FDA ordered Merck to pull Vioxx off the market.
  

• The company that produces RU-486 is foreign and therefore not allowed by federal law to contribute to American campaigns.
  

• The Bush campaign and the GOP has not, and never will, get a dime from RU-486 sales.
  

• Unlike Vioxx, RU-486 is remarkably safe – safer than Vioxx, for sure, and a lot safer than illegal abortions. Deaths following RU-486 use were 1 in every 200,000 compared to 1 in every 3,000 illegal abortions.

You see what’s happening here? The FDA’s warning on RU-486 was a no-cost way of showing the religious right that their vote for Bush was not wasted. He is on their side. He is one of them.

And the payoffs are only just beginning.

Well, you know they were bound to come down on RU-486. It combines two of the things Republicans hate most: women safely terminating pregnancies and the French!

It also leads you to think about why they fight so hard against medical marijuana. You can bet Merck and the other big drug companies don’t want their drugs competing with a plant people can grow for free. Hmm, maybe if potheads started making huge contributions to political campaigns…