Abortion Pill Safety Studies Funded by Manufacturer

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DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - Safety studies designed to increase access to the abortion pill Mifeprex are being funded by groups with direct ties to its U.S. manufacturer.

An investigative report by pro-life investigators LiveAction has uncovered two new studies being performed on Mifeprex are being funded by groups with financial ties to the manufacturer of the abortion pill.

The studies are looking at expanding the use of the pill to abort babies in the second trimester and to allow women access to the pill without direct supervision by a health care provider — billed as "self-managed" abortion.

Mifeprex's official manufacturer is listed as DANCO Laboratories LLC in New York City. With a total of two employees, its New York location is registered as a manufacturing facility with revenues of around $190,000 annually.

Between 2000 and 2017 the FDA estimated that 3.4 million women have used the abortion pill.

The details of Mifeprex's U.S. introduction have been kept from the public since the beginning. LiveAction tracked down news reports from the 1990s that show DANCO is funded by a who's who of population control billionaires: George Soros, Warren Buffett, the Kaiser Family Foundation, Population Council and the Packard Foundation.

In the 1990s, the Packard Foundation funneled over $20 million into DANCO for the FDA approvals and the U.S. introduction. Additional money flowed in from Packard for several years.

According to the multiple news reports, Mifeprex's FDA approval was the first one to have happened without disclosing the name or location of the actual manufacturer of the drug and the experts who reviewed the data for the FDA.

Additionally, further studies on the safety of abortion pills are often shrouded in secrecy. One of those studies, one that "proved" the safety of self-managed abortion, was funded by the Packard Foundation, the same group that poured millions into the pill's manufacturer.

LiveAction documented the Packard Foundation's website openly stating that their goal for helping reproductive health in the United States is "[t]o expand access to abortion, increase the use of contraception and reduce teen and unplanned pregnancies."

It has since been changed and now states their efforts will "[e]nsure that women receive quality abortion care by supporting advocacy in targeted states and addressing the clinic and provider shortage." They plan to focus those efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi as well as support "national initiatives."

Another study currently underway is looking at using Mifeprex for second-trimester abortions. This will study the effects on minority girls and women in West Africa.

This study is funded by Gynuity Health Projects, whose founder is Beverly Winikoff. Winikoff held the contract with DANCO to conduct the studies for Mifeprex's FDA approval.

Winikoff also previously worked at Population Council, one of the groups that helped DANCO bring the abortion pill to the United States. Winikoff and Gynuity are also directly funded by the Packard Foundation and indirectly funded by DANCO through Ibis Reproductive Health.

In investigating the studies, LiveAction was told by editors at the Annals of Internal Medicine that they allow the authors of abortion studies to keep their funding sources anonymous.

They claimed this was necessary to protect pro-abortion interests from "anti-abortion" violence.

"This revelation is shocking, because in any study, it is important that funding sources be made public to reveal any actual or potential conflicts of interest," LiveAction reported.

It is a well-established fact that conflict of interests can affect study outcomes. According to doctors and ethicists, those conflicts of interest can create "subtle biases [that] creep in to somehow affect the findings of studies."

Science-Based Medicine reports, "It has been shown that studies funded by drug companies are more likely to get positive results for their drug than studies funded by independent sources."

LiveAction has uncovered at least three scientific journals that are publishing pro-abortion studies that fail to meet their own standards requiring authors to identify the financial backers of the research and their interests in the research.

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