RU 486 to Canada?

Government sanctioned clinical trials of the abortifacient RU 486 have now begun in Canada. Joyce Arthur, spokesperson for the Vancouver- based "Pro-Choice Action Network," told the Toronto Globe and Mail, "Presumably, if the trial is successful it would increase the odds of it being approved here" (July 8, 2000).

The application had twice been rejected by Health Canada, the Canadian government's national health agency, but approved in April.

On July 6, Dr, Ellen Wiebe, based in Vancouver, announced that she had started clinical trials of RU 486 in late June and that she "will be joined by other researchers at Women's College Hospital in Toronto and in locations in Quebec City and Sherbrooke, Quebec, in the next two weeks," the Globe and Mail reported.

The purported purpose of the trials is to compare the effectiveness of RU 486 with another chemical abortion method. The latter employs methotrexate, a drug already approved in the U.S. and elsewhere to fight psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and certain fast-growing tumors. (Both abortion techniques also use a prostaglandin - - misoprostol - - which induces contractions to expel the dead unborn baby.)

Both RU 486 and methotrexate are supposed to have an "effectiveness" rate of between 92-96% when the woman is seven weeks pregnant or less. However, the methotrexate/misoprostol regimen ordinarily is slower acting and may take as long as a month to kill the baby.

The trials are to involve a total of 1,000 pregnant women who will receive either RU 486 or methotrexate in one of four Canadian cities - - Vancouver, Toronto, Quebec City, and Sherbrooke, Quebec.

As late as 1999, Exelgyn, the French company holding Canadian rights to the drug, declared that it had no intention of marketing the drug in Canada until the drug received government approval in the U.S. "Otherwise, you would have a lot of American tourists," Exelgyn spokeswoman Catherine Euvard told the National Post (July 17, 1999).

Whether Exelgyn's position has changed and whether it is supplying the abortifacient pills for the current Canadian trial is unclear. No company or sponsor has come forward yet to seek formal permission to market RU 486 in Canada.

NRL News has extensively documented the dangers associated with these so-called "chemical abortions." It is noteworthy that in a July 10 interview with CTV News, Dr. Wiebe, who, along with Dr. Francis Jacot, is heading the trials, conceded at least one of the principal dangers.

She noted that "follow-up is extremely important" because the drug is "not 100% effective." According to Dr. Wiebe, 1-2% of the women will not abort [the figure is actually higher] - - "and these are damaged pregnancies. So it's crucial that we follow up carefully and those women then can go on and have a surgical abortion."

It was on April 26 that Health Canada gave Wiebe and Jacot the go-ahead. "It wasn't easy,'' Jacot told the (Montreal) Gazette.

To this point at least, he said, the ethics board at the Eastern Townships University Health Centre, where part of the drug trials would be held, still hasn't approved the testing.