Ru 486 Misconceptions Myths and Morals - ressourcesfeministes

ENDNOTESChapter One1The paten t license for RU 486 does not include Baulieu. This isinteresting since Baulieu is hailed, worldwide, as the ‘father’ ofRU 486.2Judith Vincent from Sojourner comments on this question in 1990:There is also the possibility that a combination pill could bemanufactured, but the patent for such a pill is held by Schering,a German pharmaceutical company. Schering has approachedRoussel about working together, but Roussel isn’t interested.To complicate matters, Schering has developed a drug similarto RU 486—too similar. Roussel claims infringement on itspatent rights (Vincent, 1990:11H). (For further comments onthese other drugs see Chapter Four).3Exceptions are Maria et al., (1988); Sitruk-Ware et al., (1990);Somell and Olund (1990).4Interestingly, the two preferred prostaglandins—sulprostone(Nalador) and gemeprost (Cervagem)—are manufactured bySchering AG, Berlin and May and Baker, Degenham, UK, thusundercutting Roussel Uclaf’s position as solo drug provider forchemical abortion.5A previous paper published in 1988 from the same study hadonly mentioned 160 women (Gao et al.).6In 1990, an unpublished Roussel Uclaf paper lists 10,250 women(Aubeny, 1990).7According to Allan Templeton who prepared the 1990 UKMultitrial report, the results are ‘an interim analysis for a largerstudy of more than 1000 patients’.8It is also alleged that Wolfgang Hilger, President of Hoechst, theGerman pharmaceutical company which owns 54.5 per cent of123