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# Former FDA Women’s Health Head Wood Dies
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/former-fda-womens-health-head-wood-dies/
- Published: 2025-01-23T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T14:51:34.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5158538

Former FDA associate commissioner for women’s health **Susan Wood** has died at her home in London at the age of 66 after battling glioblastoma (brain cancer). In 2005, Wood resigned from the agency in protest over the agency’s decision to delay over-the counter approval of the morning-after birth control pill. After leaving the agency, she served as the director of the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health Services at George Washington University.

At the time, Wood’s departure was the first known resignation of a high-ranking FDAer that had been attributed to a policy disagreement — political interference (**George W. Bush** Administration) in delaying the Plan B emergency contraceptive from being approved for over-the-counter use. She reflected on her action during an FDA History Office [interview in 2019](https://www.fda.gov/media/165297/download?ref=fdaweb.com), saying it affected agency morale. “It affected the perception of whether or not you could trust government at the time,” she said. “You know, now we’re in a whole different world, but at that time it was a crack in the trust of the government, and in the scientific integrity of a place like the FDA.”

Wood said her key message about what transpired is that “it is fine to argue with an FDA decision. Nothing a group of scientists and physicians like to do more than argue about things. This is what you do, but make the argument is about the data and about the evidence, about what you think is best for patients, or whatever, the safety issues, and prescribers and other health professionals should be able to say, well, I trust that whatever the decision FDA made.”

Wood said FDA’s independence is supposed to be protected in statute and in practice, and its decisions are supposed to be based on the best available evidence at the time. “And if we break the trust between the prescribing community and patients with what FDA is doing, that’s a really high risk,” she said in the interview. “And so even though this is one little decision about one little niche product, about one little thing, but it has implications that we really have to resist.”

In an email to colleagues at the time of her resignation, Wood said: “I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled. The recent decision announced by the commissioner about emergency contraception, which continues to limit women’s access to a product that would reduce unintended pregnancies and reduce abortions, is contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women’s health.”