KILLER COKE?

Gregg Wirth writes: The Real Thing is getting a real headache from a coalition of human rights activists, labor unions and college students. The Campaign to Stop Killer Coke (www.killercoke.org), organized by Corporate Campaign, Inc., on behalf of SINALTRAINAL, Colombia’s national food and beverage union, is taking the fight to the company with protests, petitions and boycotts. The campaign holds Coca-Cola responsible for the murders of union leaders at its Colombia bottling plants. When students at Ireland’s largest university, University College Dublin, voted in October to ban the on-campus sale of Coke products in solidarity with SINALTRAINAL, Coke sent executives to Ireland to force a second vote in the hope of overturning the ban. The result? The ban was upheld by an even wider margin. “This seems to have come out of nowhere,” a spokeswoman for Coke’s Irish operations told a London newspaper.

TAKING CARE OF PLAN B

Patti Miller writes: On December 16, two Food and Drug Administration panels will make a decision that could revolutionize unwanted pregnancy prevention. The Reproductive Health Drugs and Nonprescription Drugs advisory committees will consider Barr Laboratories’ request to make its Plan B emergency contraception available over the counter. Studies show OTC emergency contraception is safe, does not discourage regular contraceptive use and could cut in half the 50 percent of pregnancies that are unplanned. But can Plan B get a fair hearing when three members of the eleven-member Reproductive Health Drugs committee believe contraceptives promote illicit sex? They are: Dr. Susan Crockett, who considers contraception a scriptural issue; Dr. David Hager, who advocates abstinence as the best birth control for unmarried women; and Dr. Joseph Stanford, who equates contraception and emergency contraception with abortion.