Dear Colleague:

How RU-486 kills women is now explained, but pro-abortion activists aren't
halting their promotion of the drug.

Steven W. Mosher
President

PRI Weekly Briefing
3 February 2006
Vol. 8 / No. 5


The Human Pesticide That Kills Mother, Too
By Joseph A. D'Agostino


On January 28, Dr. Ralph Miech presented an explanation of how the RU-486
abortion pill kills women to a Florida conference of the American
Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG).  RU-486,
he said, has an anti-glucocorticoid effect, which promotes unhealthy
inflammation in the body since glucocorticoid is naturally needed to
suppress inflammation.  This pro-inflammatory effect of RU-486 can lead to
septic shock as the bacterium Clostridium sordellii multiplies in the
body, sometimes causing death.  And the funny thing is, the
anti-glucocorticoid effect of RU-486 was known before the FDA approved the
drug.  Now, women by the hundreds are having potentially life-threatening
complications, and at least a few have died.

RU-486 is the drug that won't die, no matter how many women who take it
do.  A recent  article in the New England Journal of Medicine (see PRI's
Weekly Briefing, Dec. 2, 2005, "Time for a RU-486 Rollback") suggested
that an RU-486 abortion was an astonishing ten times more likely to be
fatal for the mother than a surgical abortion performed at the same point
in pregnancy (RU-486 is not used for late-term abortions).  The abortion
pill, which has been used to kill over 500,000 unborn children in this
country since the FDA officially rushed its approval in September 2000,
has the advantage of promoting the abortionists' goal of making abortion a
humdrum, everyday affair, available from any doctor or pharmacist in the
world instead of segregated into abortion slaughterhouses.  As in
America's days of old, when folk tolerated slavery but didn't like to see
slave-trading going on in respectable parts of town or associate with
slave-traders, we don't like to think the clinics we visit or the doctors
we know perform abortions.  So abortion is largely shunted off into
clinics located in poor minority neighborhoods.

Mifepristone, the scientific name for RU-486, promises to change all that.
 It's a simple pill that can be taken at home.  It requires no pricey
vacuum cutterage equipment, no bloody surgical table in the doctor's
office.  No dead fetuses in the health clinic's medical wastebaskets to
explain to any queasy souls.  All it requires is the doctor to write a few
words on a little square of white paper and hand it to his expectant
patient-something he does many times a day as it is.  A woman seeking to
abort her child need not risk been seen entering or leaving an abortuary.
Abortion easy, abortion everywhere, without any clinics to be picketed by
pesky child-huggers.

The one flaw in this inhuman and anti-human dream drug: It not only kills
the baby, it sometimes harms or even kills the mother.  Surgical abortion
is safer for the mother, which is why even pro-abortion activists should
favor the withdrawal of RU-486-but safety is not their No. 1 priority.

"RU-38486 was initially developed as an anti-glucocorticoid to treat
Cushing's Disease and in the course of routine toxicology studies it was
found to be an abortifacient," Miech told PRI.  "Under the name RU-486, it
was developed as a medical abortifacient and its toxic effect on the
innate immune system was not studied or was ignored."

Two female physicians, Margaret M. Gary and Donna J. Harrison, just
published a study in the February 2006 The Annals of Pharmacotherapy.
Harrison is chairwoman of AAPLOG's Subcommittee on Mifeprex.  "The choice
of mifepristone termination over surgical termination is based mainly on
patient perceptions of safety, convenience, and privacy, but these
perceptions do not accurately reflect the realities of the regimen," they
concluded.

The two doctors examined 637 mifepristone adverse event reports (AERs)
filed by health care practitioners after mifepristone (brand name
Mifeprex) was used by patients.  It's taken years to get these reports
released, and they are incomplete-and many adverse events are never
reported at all under America's lax reporting system.  Miech noted, "The
way the FDA has set up the AER process is that it is voluntary, and
physicians and nurses are too busy to take the time to fill out the simple
paper work.  Furthermore, most physicians and nurses do not know what an
AER is."

Wrote Gary and Harrison, "AERs relied upon by the FDA to monitor
mifepristone's post-marketing safety are grossly deficient due to
extremely poor quality."  They do contain a lot of gruesome detail,
however.  The AERs included those on the four American women known to have
died from RU-486 plus the death of a Swedish teenager.

Hemorrhage (237 reported) and infection (66) were the most frequent
complications among the AERs.  Among the hemorrhages, 168 were serious
cases, 42 life-threatening, and one was fatal.  Seven cases of septic
shock were reported, four life-threatening and three fatal.  Emergency
surgery was required in 513 cases.

The inflammations resulting from taking RU-486 reported in the AERs may be
due to mifepristone's quality of suppressing anti-inflammatories, not
allergic reactions as some believe, suggest the two.  "These
pro-inflammatory reactions reported as allergic reactions in AERs may be
due to the action of mifepristone's blockade of cortisol receptors," they
wrote.

The Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of
the House Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Mark Souder
(R.-Ind.), is already investigating RU-486's safety.  In the meantime,
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R.-Md.) is trying to get Holly's Law passed.  Named
after 18-year-old California girl Holly Patterson, a healthy young woman
killed by RU-486, Holly's Law (HR 1079) would revoke government approval
of RU-486.  South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R.) has a companion bill, S
511.  "In his State of the Union Address last night, President Bush said,
'A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not
cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every
life,'" said Bartlett on February 1.  "The President's words and this
research add more compelling justification for Holly's Law because the FDA
slashed ethical and procedural corners when it approved RU-486 under a
special 'restricted distribution' approval process."

Meanwhile, the manufacturer of misoprostol, which is often-maybe
usually-used in conjunction with mifepristone to perform abortions, has
again warned that such a use is not safe.  And the Australian Senate is
expected to vote next week on whether to override the Health minister's
decision to keep RU-486 illegal.  In a submission to the Australian
parliament, Harrison and the Family Research Council's Chris Gacek warned
that rural Australians would suffer most.  "Finally, many of the women who
underwent emergency procedures are alive because they had rapid access to
surgical and hospital services.  In a rural area, where medical and
surgical access is limited, these women would likely have died.  Women in
rural areas are the most vulnerable to lethal complications from a
mifepristone abortion," they said.

The growing number of professional articles questioning RU-486's safety
haven't slowed the drug's well-funded and globally-aware advocates one
bit.


Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.


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