Two Die After Using Abortion Pill

[Ebowed]

Two Die After Using Abortion Pill

Associated Press 04:57 AM Mar, 17, 2006 EST

WASHINGTON -- Two more women have died after using the abortion pill RU-486, federal health regulators said Friday, in warning doctors to watch for a rare but deadly infection implicated in earlier deaths.

At least seven U.S. women have died after taking the pill, sold since 2000. The Food and Drug Administration cannot prove the drug was to blame in any of the cases.

In a cluster of four cases in California, the women died from an infection of the bloodstream, or sepsis. Those women did not follow FDA-approved instructions for the pill-triggered abortion, which requires swallowing three tablets of one drug, followed by two of another two days later.

Instead of swallowing the final two tablets, the second course of pills was inserted vaginally in the four women, a so-called "off-label" use of the drug that studies show works and is widely recommended by abortion clinics but does not have federal approval.

The FDA has not confirmed the cause of the latest two deaths. But the symptoms appear to match those seen in the California cases, as do the circumstances, an FDA spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman declined to be identified, saying she could not speak publicly about the issue.

RU-486 is also called Mifeprex or mifepristone. It is sold by Danco Laboratories and is approved to terminate pregnancy up to 49 days after the beginning of the last menstrual cycle. It blocks a hormone required to sustain a pregnancy. When followed two days later by another medicine, misoprostol, to induce contractions, the pregnancy is terminated.

The FDA previously has said the abortion pill remains safe enough to stay on the market. The rate of sepsis is about 1 in 100,000 uses, comparable to infection risks with surgical abortions and childbirth.

The other U.S. death associated with Mifeprex was a case of a ruptured ectopic, or tubal, pregnancy in October 2001. The drug is not to be used by women with suspected or confirmed ectopic pregnancies, a life-threatening condition in which the fertilized egg has implanted outside the uterus.

http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,70442-0.html?tw=rss.technology

[??????????]

Poetic justice I suppose.

[Richard]

Ah, lovely.  I laugh and spit at their graves. 

[dazzleman]

7 people since 2000?  That's a very small number.  Our society seems to have lost any sense of the concept of risk.  Every medical procedure has risk, and this sounds like a very low risk.

[Umengus]

7 people since 2000?  That's a very small number.  Our society seems to have lost any sense of the concept of risk.  Every medical procedure has risk, and this sounds like a very low risk.

Indeed

[Gabu]

7 people since 2000?  That's a very small number.  Our society seems to have lost any sense of the concept of risk.  Every medical procedure has risk, and this sounds like a very low risk.

I'm curious how many people in total have used the pill.

[??????????]

7 people since 2000?  That's a very small number.  Our society seems to have lost any sense of the concept of risk.  Every medical procedure has risk, and this sounds like a very low risk.

Heres to hoping for a 20 fold increase.

[dazzleman]

7 people since 2000?  That's a very small number.  Our society seems to have lost any sense of the concept of risk.  Every medical procedure has risk, and this sounds like a very low risk.

I'm curious how many people in total have used the pill.

The problem with the media is that it provides no context, and most people don't seem to be capable of asking the right questions in order to obtain context.

The most logical question is, as you said, how may people used the pill during the period that 7 people died using it.  That would give us a good sense of the risk, since it would be expressed in terms of percentage, not raw numbers, which are meaningless without context.

It is so easy to distort things when you don't provide context.

[afleitch]

More people have died using paracetamol

[dazzleman]

More people have died using paracetamol

I don't want to sound stupid, but what is paracetamol, Andy?

[Emsworth]

More people have died using paracetamol

I don't want to sound stupid, but what is paracetamol, Andy?

Tylenol

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Even paracetamol  is insignificant compared to the number of deaths caused by DHMO (dihydrogen monoxide) each year.

[Gabu]

7 people since 2000?  That's a very small number.  Our society seems to have lost any sense of the concept of risk.  Every medical procedure has risk, and this sounds like a very low risk.

I'm curious how many people in total have used the pill.

The problem with the media is that it provides no context, and most people don't seem to be capable of asking the right questions in order to obtain context.

The most logical question is, as you said, how may people used the pill during the period that 7 people died using it.  That would give us a good sense of the risk, since it would be expressed in terms of percentage, not raw numbers, which are meaningless without context.

It is so easy to distort things when you don't provide context.

Actually, I think we both missed the "1 in 100,000 uses" statistic that was contained later in the article.  That would indicate that there would have been roughly 700,000 uses of the pill in total.

[dazzleman]

7 people since 2000?  That's a very small number.  Our society seems to have lost any sense of the concept of risk.  Every medical procedure has risk, and this sounds like a very low risk.

I'm curious how many people in total have used the pill.

The problem with the media is that it provides no context, and most people don't seem to be capable of asking the right questions in order to obtain context.

The most logical question is, as you said, how may people used the pill during the period that 7 people died using it.  That would give us a good sense of the risk, since it would be expressed in terms of percentage, not raw numbers, which are meaningless without context.

It is so easy to distort things when you don't provide context.

Actually, I think we both missed the "1 in 100,000 uses" statistic that was contained later in the article.  That would indicate that there would have been roughly 700,000 uses of the pill in total.

That doesn't sound like a very high risk to me.  Anybody who's concerned about the risk of taking one of those pills should check out the risk of surgical abortion.  I tend to think it would be higher, but I'm not going to do the research, since it's a purely academic issue for me.

[Speed of Sound]

They should be impressed by this low number, not worried about it.

[DanielX]

They should be impressed by this low number, not worried about it.

A question, though: how many people are using RU-486 in the first place?

More people die from Tylenol, but far more people take Tylenol, methinks.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

They should be impressed by this low number, not worried about it.

Low number?

From the viewpoint of the anti RU-486 folks, the death toll isn't 1 in 100,000; it's 100,001 in 100,000.

[Inverted Things]

They should be impressed by this low number, not worried about it.

Low number?

From the viewpoint of the anti RU-486 folks, the death toll isn't 1 in 100,000; it's 100,001 in 100,000.

That's one hell of a good ratio.

[A18]

Who cares?

[Citizen James]

Even paracetamol  is insignificant compared to the number of deaths caused by DHMO (dihydrogen monoxide) each year.

Yeah, but it serves them right.   I bet states and richard are closet DMHO users. 

Who cares?

Apperently not you.

[??????????]

Even paracetamol  is insignificant compared to the number of deaths caused by DHMO (dihydrogen monoxide) each year.

Yeah, but it serves them right.   I bet states and richard are closet DMHO users. 

Damn right, I consume at least 60 ozs of it daily and I even bathe in it!