FDA Told Abortion Drug May Suppress Immune System, Cause Deaths 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 11, 2006
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — While the joint FDA-CDC meeting got somewhat off topic in its discussion of the deaths of five women in the last three years form the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug, some scientists told the federal agencies they think the abortion drug is suppressing women’s immune systems — creating an environment where a normally nonlethal bacteria causes death.
The abortion drug has already been linked to the bacteria Clostridium sorreli and one researcher pointed to immune system problems as the reason for the abortion deaths.
Dr. Ralph Miech, an associate professor of pharmacology at Brown University, has already done some of the most comprehensive research on the problem. As a panelist at the meeting, he told officials the abortion drug suppresses the immune system and increases the possibility for a lethal infection.
That’s also the opinion of Dr. Randall O’Bannon, the director of research for the National Right to Life Committee.
O’Bannon said that suggestions that the presence of the bacteria in a woman’s vaginal tract is a cause of the abortion deaths is unlikely because the bacteria is already present in the vaginas of 10 percent of women, and they are not dying from lethal infections.
"The best explanation for this sudden spate of deaths among RU-486 patients appears to involve the immunosuppressant properties of the abortion pill RU-486," O’Bannon explained.
"A woman’s immune system is normally capable of protecting her from deadly bacteria like Clostridium sordellii, but RU-486 appears to compromise her immune system, so that it is unable to help her fight off such infections," Dr. O’Bannon explained.
Other researchers, including Dr. Sandra Kweder of the FDA’s for Drug Evaluation and Research’s Office of New Drugs, had another theory.
She said the second part of the abortion drug causes contractions to expel the body of the dead baby and could increase a woman’s susceptibility of getting the bacteria in her uterus.
Dr. James McGregor, an obstetrics professor at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, agreed that the problems are sufficient to warrant limiting the use of the abortion drug or pulling it from the market entirely.
"I recommend we reduce or eliminate mifepristone, or at least consider that," McGregor said, and indicate that chemical abortions were much more dangerous for women than surgical abortions.
O’Bannon agreed and said that claims from abortion advocates that the drug is safe because only six women have died in the United States when 500,000 have used the drug are misstating the facts.
He indicated the "figures are based on sales from the distributor to prescribers, not on field tallies of actual uses by patients, so uses may be grossly inflated."
Related web sites:
National Right to Life Committee – https://www.nrlc.org
