Chinese RU486 Manufacturer Distributed Tainted Anti-Cancer Drugs.

Chinese pharmaceutical company Shanghai Hualian, the sole manufacturer of the U.S. supply of the RU486 abortion drug (known as mifepristone), is under intense scrutiny after patients taking an anti-cancer drug became paralyzed.

Although mifepristone is made at a different factory, Shanghai Hualian has been accused by the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration of "producing substandard medicine that poses major risks of causing serious harm to human health" and of attempting to cover up evidence of tainted drugs, New York Times reported.

The drug, methotrexate, is used to treat leukemia (although it has also been used as an abortifacient). Patients began to report last July that they experienced intense leg pain and paralysis after being injected with the Shanghai Hualian-produced drug, according to the Times. In September, officials discovered that a different anti-cancer drug had contaminated the methotrexate during the manufacturing process.

About half of the affected patients still cannot walk, the Times reported. The company no longer has a license to make anti-cancer drugs.

Chinese officials identified the "person responsible" for the plant where the tainted drugs were produced as Gu Yaoming. According to the Times, "Records show Mr. Gu also met with the United States FDA inspectors last May as part of the routine inspection of the plant that makes RU-486."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration continued to insist that it has inspected the plant where mifepristone is made and the mifepristone supply is "safe." In a statement, the government agency insisted that "FDA is not aware of any evidence to suggest the issue that occurred at the leukemia drug facility is linked in any way with the facility that manufactures the mifepristone."

However, pro-lifers have long questioned the safety of Shanghai Hualian and the effects that its record of drug contamination could have on the health of U.S. women. The FDA even found evidence of irregularities and deficiencies in the factory's operations during inspections in 1999 and 2000 (see the comprehensive NRLC web page on RU486 at http://www.nrlc.org/RU486/ru486info.html). Despite these concerns, the Clinton Administration and its FDA fast-tracked the process to bring the abortion drug to this country and approved it in September 2000.

"The safety of women who might take RU486 was obviously never the number one concern for any of these peoplethe Chinese pharmaceutical company, the drug's American distributor, or the Clinton Administrationwhich should not be surprising when the drug you're pushing isn't designed to heal or cure people, but to take human lives," said Randall K. O'Bannon, NRLC Director of Education.

"When profit or pro-abortion ideology take precedence over people's personal welfare, you can expect to see things like hundreds of Chinese being paralyzed by tainted drugs or American women dying from rare infections that may be associated with yet not fully studied properties of a Chinese made abortion drug."