RU-486: The Human Pesticide

from the May 16, 2006 eNews issue

Seven women have died during the past five years, most notably four in California, after having taken the abortion pill RU-486. This last Thursday, the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, in part to discuss the dangers of RU-486, and whether it makes women more susceptible to deadly infection.

It is important to note that researchers believe that a bacterium, and not the RU-486 drug, directly caused these women's deaths. The women died from toxic shock caused by a Clostridium sordellii bacterium infection. C. sordellii exists in the vaginas of about one in every 1000 women without causing much harm. Only in certain cases has the bacterium caused sepsis and toxic shock following an abortion, miscarriage, and even live birth. Some physicians think that if placental or fetal tissue is left in the vagina after an abortion or birth, it offers the C. sordellii bacterium a place to quickly reproduce - leading to deadly infection.

Dr. Ralph Miech, a pharmacology professor at Brown University, has another idea. At the Atlanta summit, he suggested that the abortion pill negatively affects the immune system. He believes that these women died after taking the RU-486 pill because their bodies could no longer keep the dangerous bacterium in check.

The father of one of the victims doesn't care whether the drug was directly or indirectly responsible. He wants the FDA to withdraw its approval for the drug. Monty Patterson, father of 18-year-old Holly, who died in 2003 after taking the RU-486 abortion pill, offered the panel of scientists almost 400 articles from medical journals to support his position that the abortion drug is unsafe.

Several doctors argued that the danger from the drug is relatively low, and that it only has a death risk of about 1 in 100,000. Still, the different groups of scientists and doctors conceded that more testing and scrutiny of RU-486 needs to be done. "They all agreed there needs to be further collaborative (laboratory) research," Patterson said.

Operation Rescue, a pro-life Christian organization, has asked the FDA to pull RU-486 from the market, and last week Judicial Watch released a report that argues that the Clinton Administration put the drug on the market too quickly, before all necessary safety testing could be done.

"We call on the FDA to immediately pull RU-486 from the market in the interest of public safety," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. "To leave it on the market is to unnecessarily place politics above women’s lives and the lives of their pre-born babies. This is unethical, immoral, and unacceptable."