Opponents Of The Drug Are Impeding Medical Progress

If RU 486 (Mifepristone) were not an abortifacient, or an abortion-inducing agent, public attention would focus on its potential broad medical applicability. Unfortunately, "right-to-life" abortion opponents have effectively threatened the French manufacturer of the drug, Roussel Uclaf, and its parent firm, Hoechst AG, with an organized, worldwide economic boycott unless the drug is withdrawn from use. This threat of economic reprisal against the manufacturer has seriously delayed the potential

Written byWilliam Regelson

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Under the FDA embargo, for scientists to get laboratory supplies of RU 486, a researcher must contact the FDA or risk confiscation. The embargo has no medical basis, and no clinical application of RU 486 is possible without FDA Investigational New Drug (IND) approval. RU 486's availability in France is highly restricted and limited to its combined use with prostaglandin E2, not available in the United States. Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Committee on Small Business, stated at a hearing last November that "an embargo sends a message that the drug is dangerous and that the FDA is prejudiced against it." Wyden is currently trying to reverse the embargo.

Efforts to make RU 486 medically available in the U.S. have been strengthened by recent resolutions by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, by the New Hampshire legislature's appeal for its clinical availability in abortion in ...

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