Ru 486 Misconceptions Myths and Morals - ressourcesfeministes

What Is RU 486 and How Does It Work?asked whether and how this inhibition will affect theremaining thousands of immature eggs in a woman’s ovarythat were exposed to RU 486. In other words, a drug whichin fact might have long-term effects on folliculogenesis,ovulation and hence future fertility is declared ‘safe andeffective’, whereas, in reality, the mechanism(s) by which itmight exert this action remain(s) unknown.We are told, however, ‘that RU 486 and two of its majormetabolites can readily cross the blood follicle barrier ofhuman pre-ovulatory follicles’ (Cekan et al., 1988:131), afact acknowledged by Baulieu in 1989b (p. 1353). This wasestablished from an experiment on 21 ‘healthy femalevolunteers of proven fertility’ who requested sterilization atthe Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at theUniversity of Aberdeen. Pre-treatment of the womeninvolved ovulation induction with unacceptably high dosesof clomiphene (150 mg for five days) 18 and hCG before theywere administered a single dose of 100 mg RU 486. Thirtyfourhours later, at laparoscopy, samples of blood andfollicular fluid were collected. Both revealed highconcentrations of RU 486 and two of its metabolites, moreso in the follicular fluid than in the plasma.In the same experiment, 48 ‘healthy’ women requestingsterilization were first superovulated with clomiphene, andthen received 100 mg of RU 486 before mature egg follicleswere aspirated and fertilized in vitro. Fifty-six per cent of theeggs resulted in ‘normal’ fertilization (as compared with 66per cent of those from a control group) and developed to thefour to eight cell stage before they were frozen (Messinisand Templeton, 1988). The authors caution, however, that‘the developmental capacity of the oocytes after fertilizationin vitro could not be fully determined, since the cleavingembryos were not replaced in a recipient uterus’ (p. 594). 19In contrast, another experiment regarding the effect of RU486 on sperm-egg interaction in mice found that RU 486inhibited fertilization in vitro in a dose dependent manner which75