August 22, 2005
The Los Angeles Times has run a major story on four deaths believed to be connected with women taking the abortion-inducing drug RU-486.
The story states that more than 460,000 women have taken the drug in the United States since its approval in 2000.
Now, with this troubling story, the hard question has to be asked if sound science was employed in that approval process, or a simple political expediency?
It is up to the FDA to determine when a level of risk is too great to allow a drug to remain on the market.
Obviously, RU-486 kills whenever it is effective in destroying unborn life, but one death of an adult in every 115,000 users is not insignificant by FDA standards, or is it?
We ought to know if the FDA is monitoring this story and these cases-and whether or not there are more fatalities than we already know about.
Beyond that, the public ought to know if pressure from interest groups has led to any special treatment for RU-486.
I'm Hugh Hewitt.
Beyond The News Commentaries, produced daily by Salem Communications, bring concise and penetrating insight to everything from the current headlines to challenges facing the church, from our culture wars to the Middle East conflict and from Hollywood to Washington, D.C. These daily features cover politics, culture, religion and science with perspective from the sharpest minds in the Christian and conservative world today: David Aikman, Terry Eastland, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Albert Mohler, Dennis Prager and Janet Parshall.
