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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."

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Members of Congress held a press conference on Wednesday to discuss new research showing eight women internationally have died from using the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug, including five in the United States. More than 840 women have also experienced sometimes life-threatening complications from using the drug.

Maryland Congressman Roscoe Bartlett was joined by more than a dozen members of Congress who are backing his effort to suspend sales of the RU 486 abortion drug while its safety is investigated.

Bartlett has introduced HR 1079, otherwise known as Holly's Law. It's named after Holly Patterson, a California teenager who died from using the abortion drug she received at a Planned Parenthood facility.

"Today, we present stronger evidence that RU-486 kills and injures women," Bartlett said.

The new study, co-authored by Dr. Donna J. Harrison and Dr. Margaret M. Gary appears in the February 2006 issue of The Annals of Pharmacothrapy.

The study focuses on complications from RU 486 abortions contained in reports to the FDA from Danco Laboratories, the maker of the abortion drug, filed between September 2000 and July 2005.

They analyzed 607 reports between September 2000 and September 2004 and found five deaths and 64 life-threatening and 224 severe events.

Harrison noted that 237 women hemorrhaged, with 42 losing over half of their blood volume. Some 68 women required blood transfusions and four women went into the kind of septic shock that killed others.

Reacting to the new studies, Holly's father Monty Patterson said, "How can we expect a teenager to figure out if she's beyond the so-called normal side effects of an RU-486
abortion to serious adverse events?"

Congressman Bartlett said Congress should suspend sales of the abortion drug because Danco is not a responsible manufacturer.

"The FDA rarely pulls drugs from the market. Responsible manufacturers pull drugs from the market," he explained. However, RU-486's manufacturer, Danco, is a shell company. Its only product is RU-486. That is why Congress must act."

Bartlett also pointed out that many reports of women who have been injured from the abortion drug aren't surfacing because they're not always telling doctors that they took the abortion pills in the first place.

"It is unacceptable for the FDA to expose women to the risk of serious injury, especially deadly infections whose symptoms are similar to any RU-486 abortion when we have
documented cases of medical professionals who have failed to diagnose them," he said.

Other members of Congress including Rep. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, and Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey appeared at the press conference and urged strong support for the bill.

During a pill-induced abortion, women take a two-part drug process.

The first drug, mifepristone, works by blocking the effects of progesterone, shutting off nutrition to the placenta and the developing baby. The second drug, misoprostol, is a cancer drug that is misused to cause contractions and expel the deceased unborn child.

Professor Ralph P. Miech, MD, Ph.D. writes that the antiprogesterone effects of mifepristone also cause changes in the cervix that allow C. sordellii, a common vaginal bacteria, to enter the cervical canal.

"C. sordellii thrives in this low-oxygen environment and derives nutrition from the decaying fetal tissue," Miech explains. Meanwhile, mifepristone produces other hormonal effects, known as antiglucocorticoid actions.

Dr. Miech proposes two models showing how those hormonal effects prevent the woman's immune system from fighting off the bacteria and, in fact, may help it spread. That combination can result in a septic shock -- the kind that killed the women taking the Mifeprix abortion pills.

The FDA and Danco Laboratories, maker of the abortion drug, report that five women have died in the United States, four of them from California. Three of the women were known to have the C. sordellii bacteria in their bodies when they died.

According to Miech, C. sordellii infections are "rare outside of mifepristone use" and are particularly dangerous because women do not show any telltale signs of infection or fever and tenderness upon examination.

"[I]t appears that the mechanisms of mifepristone action favor the development of infection that leads to septic shock," Miech explained.

That's the same conclusion Frank Gentle, supervising coroner investigator who looked into Holly Patterson's death, reached when he performed her autopsy.

He said "septic shock, due to endomyometritis (inflammation) due to therapeutic, drug-induced abortion," caused Patterson's death. Endomyometritis is an inflammation of the mucous membrane lining of the uterus.

In other words, "the abortion caused inflammation, which caused the shock, which caused her death," Gentle said.

The FDA, in late 2004, required Danco to improve it's black-box warning label to indicate that bacterial infections may occur and that women taking the abortion drugs may show no signs of infection.

Earlier this month, and weeks after another woman died from using the abortion drug, Danco announced it would finally implement the new warning labels and alert doctors and emergency room directors about the potential problems.

Danco also denied that the abortion drug played any role in the women's deaths.

Miech is a professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biotechnology at Brown Medical School.

RU 486 Maker Admits Abortion Drug Not "Safer" Than Surgical Abortion