With RU-486, there may not be a "morning after"...

From The New York Times:

Government Calls Conference to Study 2 Deadly Infections

By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — The federal government has called an unusual scientific conference to look into two related bacterial infections, one that killed four California women who took an abortion pill and the other that has caused outbreaks of diarrhea and colitis in hospitals and nursing homes across the nation.

Fifteen to 20 scientists who have studied the two bacteria have been asked to present their research at the conference, scheduled for May 11, an official at the Food and Drug Administration said Friday. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the abortion pill, Mifeprex or RU-486, is so controversial that some officials have been threatened after speaking about it publicly.

Security at the conference will be unusually tight, the official said. It will be held in an auditorium at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Attendees must register by April 15. The National Institutes of Health will also participate in the conference, according to a federal register notice.

Officials are concerned that the political controversy swirling around medical abortions may interfere with the scientific discussion, the F.D.A. official said in an interview.

"We hope to keep the focus on the science," the official said. "We're holding this in a secure government facility for a reason."

The two bacteria are Clostridium sordellii and Clostridium difficile, which generally live in the soil and in human intestinal tracts. Both thrive in environments with limited oxygen. When these bacteria infect the bloodstream, they can produce a toxin that causes something akin to toxic shock syndrome.

People infected with Clostridium sordellii, the one that caused the RU-486 deaths, often fail to understand their peril until too late in part because the infections often do not produce fevers.

Information available on this site also suggests that RU-486 is anything but safe:

..A California teenager, Holly Patterson, died from septic shock in September of 2003 after taking RU-486. She went to the hospital several days after recieving the pills and according to the San Francisco Chronical she was told "her pain and bleeding were normal, and she was sent home with painkillers."¹ Three days later, she returned to the hospital where she died of septic shock.

Population Council's RU-486 drug trials in Canada were suspended in 2001 following the September 1, 2001 death of a woman participating in the trials, from septic shock due to a bacterial infection.⁴² The Canadian newspaper, National Post, reported that she took RU-486 pills on August 23 and returned two days later for misoprostol. By August 28 she was bleeding and suffering from cramps. She was hospitalized with unspecified side effects and died September 1, from a toxic-shock type syndrome brought on by a bacterial infection identified as Clostridium sordelli. The Vancouver abortion provider heading the Canadian drug trials, Dr. Ellen Wiebe, told the National Post that "The drugs caused the abortion and the infection is related to the abortion. ..." ⁴³

Despite this evidence, to some, a woman's "choice to abort" trumps her very safety. This, ironically, from the same folks who trumpet the bumper sticker slogan that abortions should be safe and legal.

RU 486, which will be called mifepristone in this country, is a safe, effective method of abortion which can be used during the first nine weeks of pregnancy and may be a possible treatment for fibroid tumors, ovarian cancer, endometriosis, meningioma, and some types of breast cancer.

Developed by Roussel Uclaf and available in France since 1988, this medical breakthrough until recently has been withheld from American women by anti-abortion politics. In 1994, the U.S. patent rights were turned over to the Population Council, a New York-based scientific research organization.(emphases added)

Of course, the decision to withhold RU-486 wouldn't have anything to do with its dangers, now would it?

To reiterate:

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the abortion pill, Mifeprex or RU-486, is so controversial that some officials have been threatened after speaking about it publicly.

Now, seeing as how the conference would be talking about dangers associated with RU-486 (which very well may lead to its withdrawal from the market), I wonder which folks on which side of the abortion argument have been doing the threatening...? (I'll give you two guesses; the first one doesn't count)

Given these threats, should there be another group to which RICO statutes should be applied? After all, what's good for the goose...


(Filed under defense of life)