| I believe this isn't just a matter of women and technology, although
it is if you are referring to RU486. It's more a matter of improvement
of the style of life via technological advances. There are several
barriers to international sharing of technological innovation, in
the case of it entering America:
a) the UL and other technical standards, in the case of electrical
and similar technologies
b) the FDA in the case of food and drugs
c) the department of tobacco and firearms (I always wondered how
they got into the same department together) when it comes to
things you smoke or shoot
d) constitutional & legal regulations when it comes to things that are
dangerous to our freedoms, etc.
We choose to regulate international trade of technology by sifting it
through these and other regulation-boards in order to ensure it will
bring the most good to the most people, and harm the fewest. In the
case of RU486 , the decision of whether or not to allow it in this
country depends not on how many people WANT it to be legal, but on how
many people DON'T WANT it to be legal. They are not considering the
side-effects or health of the constituents who will use the drug (which
has already proven safe under a doctor's prescription and care in
foreign countries), rather they are considering the backlash from the
anti-choice groups in the form of drug boycotts, and more clinic
picketing and destruction, and there may be some lobbyists and consumer
action people and other power-players and religious stuff going on
behind the scenes that we may never see (pardon the vague jargon).
Usually, incoming technologies are weighed according to how useful
they will be. RU486 is being weighed according to the impact the
violent opposition will have on our country if it is approved for
use in the US.
-Jody
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| From personal mail between us Marge, I got the impression that Steve
was talking about individual rights. For example, if a new cigarette
was discovered that was proven to be far safer than those marketed
in the US, would the government be justified in preventing the newer,
safer product from being introduced in this country on the grounds
that some people disapprove of smoking. Smoking is legal in the
U.S. (although increasingly restricted). Should a safer, improved
cigarette be withheld from the American public because some people
disapprove of smoking?
The question appears to about individual rights. Mikhail Gorbachev,
in his U.N. speech, has urged the nations of the world to "subordinate
ideological differences for mutual concerns in an interdependent
world. The question is raised,...
Do all individuals of the world have certain rights that should
not be interfered with by government?
People in Sudan are being starved by their government. Does their
government have that right?
The question (to me) is about the rights of individuals in an ever
increasingly interwoven world society.
Mary
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| re: .1
It was Mary's remark about that drug that prompted my thinking,
Marge, but my intention in posing the questions was generalize it
a bit. In truth, I do realize the questions are a subset of
some fairly standard philosophical (and/or Poli. Sci.) questions,
but for my own personal reasons, I felt like suggesting the topic
here. I wouldn't argue (from a logical position) if people feel
it's inappropriate to this conf. I wasn't meaning to address
RU486 specifically but rather the thesis that American women have a
"right" to technology developed elsewhere; if so, what is the
justification for such a "right"?
In any case, if the concensus is that the topic isn't a good "fit"
here, we can always send it to the circular file. . .
Or, if it'd make a better topic, RU486 could be the focus.
Steve
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| From the "Science and the Citizen" section of Scientific America, December
1988.
FERTILITY RITES - Controversy and liability are limiting contraceptive
options.
by Karen Wright
Recently the French company Group Roussel-UCLAF made the headlines when it
declared that, in response to "public outcry at home and abroad," it would
halt distribution of a pill that safely induces abortion (RU-486). That
announcement sparked even more vehement protests and the French government,
which had approved the drug a month before, promptly overruled the
company's decision. No such clamor greeted the Upjohn company's decision a
year ago to phase out one of the three abortifacients it has marketed in
this country for more than a decade. Upjohn claims low demand and the
availability of alternative products justify its action. But some industry
observers say Upjohn's decision, like Roussel-UCLAF's, reflects the perils
of reproductive research in the 1980's. Straightforward science has become
tangled in a thicket of economic, political and social complications.
Fertility experts say Americans in particular are being denied options in
reproductive technology that have been available for years in many other
countries, while the prospect that this country will lead a revolution in
contraceptives grows increasingly unlikely.
Upjohn has weathered a persistent boycott by antiabortion groups in
order to sell its abortifacients in the US. Judged safe and effective by
the Food and Drug Administration in the 1970's, the drugs, which contain
hormones called prostaglandins, are indicated for use in the second
trimester of pregnancy. The products have other indications, but
family-planning experts say the injectable prostaglandin Upjohn pulled from
the market was the one most commonly used to induce abortions. Upjohn is
careful to distance the two prostaglandins that it still sells in the US
from Roussel-UCLAF's abortifacient. In September RU-486 was approved in
France and China for use in the first trimester; it is a potential
candidate for a morning-after pill.
Many family planning experts think right-to-life activists would
succeed in throttling any attempts to sell RU-486 in this country.
Upjohn's prostaglandins may have survived such opposition because activists
were distracted by a more heated skirmish over the company's injectable
contraceptive, Depo-Provera. In the 1970's, evidence that the drug caused
tumors in beagles created an uproar that scuttled the company's bid for
approval. Subsequent reports have cast doubt on the evidence, but the FDA
has held firm.
While Depo-Provera remains mired in controversy here, six million
women in more than 90 countries outside the US are using some form of
injectable contraceptive. In a dozen countries women can also receive
hormone implants that afford protection from pregnancy for five years.
"American women have to make do with the last generation of contraceptives,
while the rest of the world moves ahead," says Sheldon J. Segal, director
of population sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation.
In this country, public outcry is just one of the factors
discouraging contraceptive development. The multi-million-dollar
judgments against GD Searle & Co. and Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp. and the
$2.5 billion Dalkon shield settlement with the AH Robins Company, Inc., are
fearful precedents for a would-be manufacturer. The FDA requirements for
contraceptives are move stringent than those applied to drugs used to treat
disease. Years of animal testing can push the cost of developing a new
contraceptive up to $50 million or more, and every year spent studying
monkeys is one less year a company can claim a patent protection on the
market.
It is alarming but not surprising, then, that only one US company
is actively pursuing contraceptive research. In the early 1970's at least
eight American companies did so. Nonprofit organizations and Government
laboratories have been struggling to pick up where the other seven left
off. The National Institute of Child Health an Human Development funded
many of the studies that led to the approval of the cervical cap earlier
this year, and a nonprofit group, the Population Council, is sponsoring an
application for the implantable contraceptive, Norplant.
Assuming these groups gain FDA approval, they still have to find
commercial firms willing to manufacture an market their drugs. "Even when
you do the research yourself, a lot of companies don't want to be bothered,"
says Richard Lincoln, a senior fellow at the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
Lincoln also says the low birthrate in this country has veiled the
urgency of the issue. But contributing to that low rate are the 1.5
million abortions that occur every year - a full fourth of all pregnancies
and one of the highest abortion rates among developed countries. "Our
ability to control pregnancy in this country," Lincoln says, "is rotten."
New contraceptives would not eradicate the problem of unwanted
pregnancy, but they could help. This spring a working group at the
National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine plans to publish an
appraisal of measures that could be taken to improve the climate for
contraceptive innovation. Some observers fear that, unless the public
perceptions that prompted Roussel-UCLAF's decision can be changed, the
panel's recommendations will have little impact.
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