Accept no substitutes.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Stop us if you've heard this one before: The Bush administration, eager to win Senate confirmation of its nominee for head of the Food and Drug Administration, promises that the FDA is ready to make a final ruling on nonprescription access to emergency contraception.

Such promises, it turns out, are worth slightly less than a Zimbabwe dollar (currently at an exchange rate of 500,000 for 1 U.S. dollar).

So, Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington should stand firm in their efforts to block the nomination of Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach until the FDA approves Barr Laboratories' request for over-the-counter sale of its Plan B contraceptive.

Von Eschenbach issued a marvelously convenient announcement on the eve of his Tuesday confirmation hearings that he'd like to talk with Barr about approving nonprescription sale of Plan B for women 18 and older. That announcement and a million Zimbabwean dollars might buy a cup of coffee in Harare, but it doesn't mean diddly in Washington, D.C.

Here's what's wrong with von Eschenbach's offer to move forward on Plan B: It's booby-trapped with all kinds of familiar deal-killing escape clauses. Before one package of Plan B can be sold to help one woman prevent an unwanted pregnancy, Barr must re-file its application with the following changes:

The company must agree to sell the drug over-the-counter only to women over 18 (it had earlier sought to sell to women over 16, at the FDA's suggestion).

The nonprescription version must have completely different packaging from the prescription version and both must be kept behind a pharmacist's counter.

Barr must outline how it will enforce the age restriction.

This sounds like the kind of disingenuous nonsense the FDA has manufactured throughout its sorry history with Plan B. An analysis from the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, confirmed that Plan B decisions at the top levels of the FDA were covered with the fingerprints of anti-abortion and abstinence-only ideologues within the Bush administration. FDA scientists told the GAO investigators that approval of Plan B was hijacked by the FDA's upper-level political appointees from the start.

Clinton and Murray were double-crossed last year by someone high up in the political pecking order after they agreed to withdraw their opposition to the nomination of former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford pending a decision on Plan B. The two senators accepted the written assurance of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt that the FDA would act on Plan B by September 2005, only to learn later that they had been betrayed.

The promised action turned out to be another indefinite delay in approving over-the-counter sales of a medication that's as safe as Tylenol. Shortly after Crawford announced his stalling maneuver on Plan B, he abruptly resigned without explan- ation.

More promises on Plan B? No thanks. Slogan of the Day: Approve Plan B before approving Von E.