
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 28, 1990                   TAG: 9006280795
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium

AMA ENDORSES TESTING OF FRENCH ABORTION PILL

The controversial French abortion pill has won backing from the American Medical Association, the nation's largest doctors' association.

In a voice vote Wednesday, the AMA's 436-member policy-making House of Delegates endorsed testing and possible use of the RU-486 abortion pill.

"The abortion issue, pro and con, should not interfere with our ability to conduct all kinds of investigations for all kinds of problems," said Dr. Charles Sherman, chairman of the AMA committee that recommended support for the pill.

The pill is not available in the United States, and no U.S. companies have applied for Food and Drug Administration approval to market it in this country because, doctors say, they fear running afoul of the anti-abortion movement.

Some doctors in the AMA, whose 290,000 members account for about 45 percent of the nation's physicians, said the pill appears safer and cheaper than surgical abortion and may be useful in treating brain tumors, breast cancer and other illnesses.

A leading abortion opponent attacked the AMA action.

"I think it is outrageous for doctors to be thinking up better ways for killing their little patients," John Willke, president of National Right to Life, said in a telephone interview from his Washington office.

But the director of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, a coalition of abortion rights, family planning and women's health groups, welcomed the AMA move.

"It's extremely important that the AMA, representing the mainstream medical community in the country, has spoken out," Marie Bass said from Washington.

The drug causes the uterus to shed its lining, as occurs in menstruation, and expel a fertilized egg.

RU-486, or mifepristone, was developed in 1980 by the French pharmaceutical company Roussel Uclaf and approved for use there in September 1988.

The following month, Roussel Uclaf pulled RU-486 off the market because anti-abortion advocates boycotted the company's products. Two days later, the French government, a minority owner of the company, ordered it to resume marketing.

by CNB