In his relentless attempt at winning the most obnoxious blogger of the year award, Steve Verdon over at OTB shall we we say “disrespectfully disagrees” with Michelle Malkin about the abortion pill, RU-486.
Calling Michelle Malkin on Her Nonsense
A few days ago Michelle Malkin had a post noting what a horribly horribly dangerous drug RU-486 is. Bill Ardolino called her on that one and pointed out that the actually numbers imply that Michelle is pushing crap statistics for ideological reasons.
So, let’s get this straight: assuming accurate data (admittedly a big assumption), a total of ten women (reported) have died, presumably related to a fatal interaction with the drug, in 16 years of international use. Of those ten, five occurred in the United States, where 460,000 women have taken the drug safely since its approval, five years ago.
That equals a mortality rate of 0.0000108, meaning that 1 out of every 92,000 people that took the drug have died.
Bill compared it among other things to penicillin,
Yeah, so can penicillin, at a greater mortality rate than RU-486:
The risk of penicillin fatal allergy is about 1 in 75,000.
Anytime I hear of a story about public health scares, I think of the great Alar hoax, where million of people quit buying apples because Meryl Streep went before Congress and said we were poisoning our children with Alar sprayed on apples. If you are too young to remember it, this was the talk of the country for about 6 months. 60 Minutes did a hit piece story on it and it was in every magazine and newspaper. Thousands of apple growers lost their farms because you couldn’t give an apple away. And it turned out Alar was indeed bad for you… If you drank a 55 gallon drum of it, then you might get cancer or something. The whole thing was a hoax.
So when I hear a public heath statistic I wonder, “How many apples is that?”
The United States produces a little over 200 million cartons of apples per year. There are roughly 90 apples per case, so that’s about 18 billion apples. If one out of 92,000 apples killed the person who ate it, that would be 195,652 dead people per year or 536 people PER DAY.
Now stop and consider if 536 people died every day from eating apples. Congress would be holding hearings, the news networks would be covering the story 24/7 and survivors of the dead apple eaters would be lynching former apple growers.
The point is obvious. Killing one 1 of 92,000 users of your product is nothing to be proud of. While that mortality rate might be acceptable in medicine, that mortality rate on another product would get it banned.
So why don’t we ban Amoxicillin? Simply because it saves many times more lives than it costs. The good outweighs the bad. Where Steve and Bill’s analogy falls down is that Amoxicillin saves children, RU486 kills them.
We derive good from Amoxicillin. Do we derive good from RU486? Well, I’ll leave that to you the reader.. I don’t see any.
But comparing the 2 numbers is, in many ways, like comparing apples and oranges. Sure they are somewhat analogous because they are both pharmaceuticals but that has more to do with form factor than relative worth to a society. If you are look at the larger picture of whether a product should be banned, that is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
Steve goes on to write:
We all have our preconceived notions, biases and beliefs. Ideally we don’t want these things to get in the way of scientific research or even our evaluation of information… but that is probably asking too much.
I agree. And I’m glad he would never believe something obviously untrue because it meet his political agenda.
People’s thoughts on banning of RU-486 is going to closely parallel their beliefs on abortion. And for the record, I’m not arguing in this piece that we should or shouldn’t… But I can say without a doubt; if it were apples, we’d ban it.
The problem with the RU-486 pill is not simply the small number of women who have died from it. The scary thing is that the normal side effects, crampping and bleeding, are also the same symptom of the deadly infection.
If the warning signs of deadly problems are the same as the standard side effects of the drug how is a woman to know when she needs immedate medical attention?
I don’t understand how “pro-choice” people can support this sort of thing.
Hmmmm.
“Don’t take my word for it – Google it, it’s easy to find.”
I’m lazy. 🙂 Please provide a link to the reputable medical journal or US government website that provides that information.
I’ll start you along the way but I’m not your handy-dandy reference librarian.
Here’s the CDC, showing the US maternal mortality rate at 12 per 100,000 live births, or one maternal death per 8300 live births.
http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/fs030220.htm
Note that this figure is ‘per live births’. I mis-typed above – I should have said ‘about 20 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies’, not ‘per 100,000 live births’. My bad. You’ll also note, if you care to Google further, that many researchers provide compelling evidence that the CDC reporting criteria for maternal leads to significant under-reporting.
Whatever the case, it seems pretty clear that the chance of dying from being/remaining pregnant is far higher – at least 10 times higher – than the chance of dying from the use of RU-486.
llater,
llamas
WEll yes… but no… If you’re taking RU486 it is pretty clear that you are pregnant and therefor your risk of pregnancy is now the baseline.
To prove the point you are trying to prove you would need to have data from WHEN people took 486 and WHEN people died in pregnancy… (or aanother good way would be to argue how many women die during childbirth)
RU doesn’t make it so you were never pregnant.
(and again I’m talking about the strength of the arguments not the Pill itself.)
Your pregnancy risk is already established.
(once again… I’m not arguing for or against the pill… If you notice, I’m BOTH knocking your argument AND giving you suggestions on how to strengthen it. )
Take another swing at it…
If you wish do a risk/benefit analysis on RU-486, I propose you do the reasearch to compare it to the following, based upon the fact that the “benefit” of the drug is not having a baby through something a woman can do at home on her own.
1. Not having sex
2. Oral contraception
3. “Morning after” pills
If you wish to broaden things a little, you could include Injectable/Implantable contraceptives, but to include abortion as a comparison wouldn’t be accurate, because the goal is significantly changed.
And the only way that “pregnancy and childbirth” should enter into the equation is in context of looking at RU-486 as a “remedy” for that condition/circumstance, to draw a disease/cure parallel with other drugs.
What we’re talking about is something that allows a woman to “fix” her unwanted pregnancy when she was unwilling to do anything to prevent said pregnancy. As far as I know, there aren’t any comparable drugs for that. The closest thing is a “morning after” regimen that a woman would only have to worry about within a day or two of having (unprotected) sex.
Now, even completely disregarding the obvious moral issues involved, I have a very hard time seeing a need for RU-486. There are other ways that have been proven safe over decades of of study for a woman to avoid pregnancy. There are legal means currently available for a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. I don’t see that any risk would be “acceptable” on a drug that’s not needed. Even with the concession that the condition of pregnancy is what’s being “treated” by this drug, doesn’t it make better sense to take a “vaccine” (contraceptives) against a disease instead of taking a “remedy” (RU-486)?
S wrote:
Paul, in all due respect, logically I find it not possible to discuss the one drug (whose chemical function is to abort a human fetus) without discussing the issue of abortion.
I agree with that. A discussion of the benefits/costs of RU-486 has to include the issue of abortion. Amoxicillin isnt really comparable because there isnt some massive ethical debate surrounded by its use. RU486 is completely linked with the issue of abortion, and a discussion about banning it can be expected to lead to the discussion of abortion. You cant really get into the costs/benefits of RU486 to society without getting into the ethical and social aspects.
So I think its a little unfair to be banning people for bringing up the larger issue of abortion, when the post is about the possible dangers of RU486.
Basically Paul is contending that RU486 should be banned based on the fact that 1 out of 92,000 people die from the use of the product. That is only taking part of the larger issue into consideration, and I would think that other aspects would have to be considered and discussed (including the issue of abortion overall) for a somewhat useful understanding to be achieved.
So I do agree with Paul that the comparison to Amoxicillin isnt really viable, since the two drugs arent really dealing with that same kind of situation. RU486 is all about the whole “lesser of two evils” situation. Maybe a better comparison would be to something like Prozac, where people have all kinds of negative reactions and side effects, but are sometimes “cured” of depression symptoms. Another comparison, possibly more relevant, is RU486 with the actual procedure of abortion. Someone already brought that up earlier. Since abortion is legal, thats another way that the discussion could be expected to go.
Comparing RU486 to penicillin is about as useful as comparing it to apples. The consumption of apples by Americans is in no way comparable to the use of RU486, which is employed by a much more select segment of society. Apples are eaten by just about everyone, of every age, and the same cannot be said about RU486 (at least I hope not). Along with that, there are really no ethical/moral issues surrounding the consumption of apples. People dont get into heated debates over whether or not Granny Smiths should be legal or not.
Even with the concession that the condition of pregnancy is what’s being “treated” by this drug, doesn’t it make better sense to take a “vaccine” (contraceptives) against a disease instead of taking a “remedy” (RU-486)?
Yes.
If you wish to broaden things a little, you could include Injectable/Implantable contraceptives, but to include abortion as a comparison wouldn’t be accurate, because the goal is significantly changed.
In my understanding, 486 is used once pregnancy occurs, and could therefor be considered an alternative to abortion…so the comparison between the two seems pretty relevant to me. Talking about safe sex/contraceptives etc. is also relevant, but is talking about dealing with things at a much earlier stage (prevention). 486 and abortions are employed when things have aready gone too far…they are late stage attempts at fixing so called problems or mistakes.
I thought evryone was supposed to be using condoms to AVOID pregancy and…oh yeah…DISEASE. Seems to me that if everyone starts relying on RU-486 so they can ride “bareback” you’ll start to see a rise in STD’s and possibly more deaths….
Just another wrinkle to factor in…..
I’d just like to point out a logic error in the original post, as well as a point about government regulations.
The error in the original post is here: “If one out of 92,000 apples killed the person who ate it, that would be 195,652 dead people per year or 536 people PER DAY. … The point is obvious. Killing one 1 of 92,000 users of your product is nothing to be proud of.”
My family of six eats about 30-40 apples per week. The consumption of RU-486 is, I assume, considerably smaller than that. So using the number of apples as the base for the statistic, rather than the number of people who die from eating apples, invalidates the comparison utterly, in the exact same way that Paul accuses Steve of invalidating the comparison earlier. Keeping in mind that 100,000 out of 100,000 people will eventually die from some cause, though obviously not all in one year, it would not surprise me to find that indeed apples kill 1 in 92,000 people.
On government regulation, yes, Congress should absolutely pass every law. Any regulation made by an executive agency should be subject to Congressional debate and vote before taking effect. That is the reason that Congress exists: to pass the laws that effect us. And by doing so, those laws can be appealed; they can be repealed or modified; they can be used as a reason to campaign for or against an actual person capable of changing or keeping the law as is.
By abdicating responsibility to unelected bureaucrats, Congress skips the difficult questions and can deny responsibility, while the bureaucrats of course are subject to no voter retribution at all. Instead, the executive’s power should be limited to policy-making on the enforcement of law. It is reasonable for the executive to state that factories releasing less than 1 part per 100,000,000 of some chemical will not be prosecuted on environmental grounds for that release, but not reasonable for the executive to mandate that a factory must not release more than 1 part per 100,000,000 of that chemical. That is Congress’s job. If they cannot do it, they can hire staff to keep up with the details. If that’s still too much, then there are too many laws and Congress should not be regulating all the areas they are, and to the extent they are.
The current system of having unaccountable bureaucrats and unaccountable Congressmen is nothing less than an end-run around the concepts of limited government, separation of powers and accountability to the electorate.
Hmmm.
“I’ll start you along the way but I’m not your handy-dandy reference librarian.”
Hey. It worked right? 🙂
What I find curious is if you look at the document linked you’ll see:
“Women aged 40 and older had nearly four times the risk of dying from a pregnancy-related cause as women aged 30-34 years and had twice the risk for women aged 35-39 years.”
While another document, that covers 1987-1990 vs the 1991 – 1999 liked to above, the mortality rate is actually lower: link
“RESULTS: During 1987-1990, 1,459 deaths were determined to be pregnancy-related. The overall pregnancy-related mortality ratio was 9.2 deaths per 100,000 live births.”
So from 1987 – 1990: 9.2 per 100,000
From 1991 – 1999: 12 per 100,000
Is it from live births or the aging of expectant mothers? I.e. 40 years ago women had their kids in their late teens or early twenties. But since that time women have put off having children until later and later in life until now when there are women in their 50’s, and some in their 60’s, having children. Since older women having children are at a higher risk from pregnancy, is the resultant increase in fatalities from the pregnancy and birth, or from being so much older when attempting it?
The increasing age of expectant mothers needs to be factored in I think.
Paul, did your whip break after virtually flagellating me?
😉