From DEBRA@oln.comlink.apc.orgTue Sep 12 08:23:21 1995 Date: Sat, 09 Sep 1995 08:26:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing95-l@netcom.com, beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org Subject: WCW: Antifertility Vaccines opposed [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] ## Original in: /HRNET/WOMEN ## author : hercilia@wcw.apc.org ## date : 03.09.95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ New antifertility vaccines opposed By: Maria Elena Hurtado A worldwide campaign to stop research into so called "antifertility vaccines", which treat pregnancy as if it was a disease, is quickly gaining support. The campaign, organized by the Women's Global Network on Reproductive Rights, focuses on a new class of long term contraceptives which cause temporary infertility by turning the immune system against the hormone HCG (human chorionic gonadotrophin). HCG is produced by the woman's body shortly after conception. By 'killing' HCG, the body is unable to prepare for pregnancy and expels the fertilized egg. Five main research teams have been working on immunological contraceptives for 20 years. The vaccines are expected to provide protection for two years. Though they are not yet in the market, the vaccines have already been tried in India, Australia, Finland, Sweden, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Brazil. "When the research started in the 1970s, the aim was to produce a contraceptive that, like vaccines, could be injected on hundreds of thousands of women at once. It was billed as the solution to uncontrolled population growth," said Barbara Mintzes of He alth Action International at an NGO Forum workshop. Now pharmaceutical companies like Organon claim the new vaccines will provide more choice for women. But the question women are asking is, at what price? Critics of the new vaccines point to possible health risks, the potential for abuse, the inappropriateness of the method and the unethical clinical trials. As Mintzes explained, one of the problems of using the immune system (the body's mechanism for fighting disease) for contraception is that it takes two months to build up resistance against the fertilized egg. This means another method of birth control w ould have to be used during that period. There are also questions about their effects on women suffering from malnutrition, parasitic infections and other illnesses whose body's defenses are already under a lot of stress. Nobody also knows whether the new contraceptive will interact with the A IDS virus, which attacks the immune system, and what will happen to women who are HIV positive but do not know it when they get injected with the vaccines. A further problem is that once injected, they cannot be "switched off" even if the woman develops an allergy or decides later on she wants a child. The long-term contraceptive, Norplant, which is implanted under the skin, is a case in point. Supposedly, Norplant can be removed if problems develop but this has not been possible in the case of some unlucky users who will have to suffer until the effe ct wears off. In the largest trial of said vaccine in India, the success rate was only of 60% and four babies were born to women who took part in the trial without their knowing it. "We are not against contraceptives; we want women to have access to safe contraceptives," says Mintze. The clarification was important because Human Life International, a pro-life movement, has been spreading rumors in Tanzania, Nicaragua and the Phillippines that anti-tetanus vaccines are being mixed with this contraceptive. The rumors are endangering lives: at a recent immunization campaign in the Philippines, only a quarter of all those expected to have turned up on the last day of vaccination, did so. If people catch tetanus, it will be the fault of the scare mongers and, by implication, of the researchers of a birth control method with so much potential for abuse.