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

DATE: FRIDAY, October 28, 1994                   TAG: 9410280078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                 LENGTH: Medium

SECRECY VEILS ABORTION-PILL TEST

The first major U.S. trial of the French abortion pill has begun under security so tight the sponsor won't say where the medication is being offered or how many clinics are participating.

More than 100 women have been given the pill since September as part of an $8 million study that could make the drug routinely available to American women by 1996, the Population Council said Thursday.

The availability of the pill, formerly known as RU-486 and now called mifepristone, won't be advertised, according to Dr. C. Wayne Bardin, the council's research director. Women coming to clinics for surgical abortions will be quietly taken aside and advised of the new option, he said.

``You may have noticed there are some nuts out there who do bad things to people who deliver abortions,'' Bardin said, defending the secrecy.

Security guards were posted at the entrance to the news conference at a New York hotel. Reporters were asked to show identification before being admitted.

Bardin said more than 12 and fewer than 20 clinics were involved in the study. It will include 2,100 women over age 18 who are in the first two months of pregnancy.

The study is aimed at determining the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone. When it is completed in the spring of 1995, an application for approval of the abortion pill will be submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has promised to expedite its review, Bardin said.

Immediately after the news conference, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America announced that six of its affiliates were participants in the study. The participating clinics are in Des Moines; Williston, Vt.; Houston; Cambridge, Mass.; Aurora, Colo.; and San Diego.

Jane Johnson, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said she did not expect news of Planned Parenthood's participation to require any more security than is already in place.

The Population Council is testing the drug under an agreement reached in May with the drug's maker, Roussel Uclaf of France.

by CNB