Ru 486 Misconceptions Myths and Morals - ressourcesfeministes

RU 486“Doctor” is just irresponsible’ (Transcript Newztel: 2). Askedby the interviewer why he was so defensive about legitimatequestions relating to a new drug, his response was that he wasnot defensive but offensive [sic!] but he did not ‘like somebodywho hides some untold prejudice behind… let’s say the heartof a doctor’ (p. 10). These comments prompted the interviewerto hastily bring the broadcast to an end commenting, ‘well wemay be at risk of defamation here, Professor Baulieu, so thoseare your words and certainly not Radio New Zealand’s’ (p. 10).In a later interview with Anne Delaney on the Health Report,Radio National in Australia (22.4.91) he described her questionsas slightly vicious and discontinued the telephone conversation,because, as he put it, he had to continue his work for women!18Baulieu is not the first to use an oral prostaglandin. Swahn et al.published a study with an oral prostaglandin in 1990.Chapter Three1This is one of the many places in medical literature where theinherent sexism of this profession expresses itself overtly byconceptualizing a woman’s body as a militaristic site—a ‘target’—and an incubator for a pregnancy—hence in this case the ‘rescue’of the doomed ‘curious’ corpus luteum by a fertilized egg!2From our perspective, Arpad Istvan Csapo is central to theconceptualization of chemical abortion. His concepts andrecommendations provided the background for contemporarychemical abortion and the threat it poses to women. He wasborn in Hungary in 1918, where he received his medical degree(an MD) and initial medical appointment at the University ofSzeged. He was an Associate Professor at the RockefellerInstitute from 1956–1961 and chief of its laboratory ofreproductive physiology from 1961–1963. In 1961 he wasappointed as Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology atWashington University, St Louis, Missouri. He was also theMannheimer Fellow at the University of Uppsala, Sweden,1948–49; Fellow of the Carnegie Institute, USA, 1949–51;Fellow of the Guggenheim Institute, USA, 1954–55; Lecturer126