Deaths of Women Who Used Abortion Pill Spur Investigation

Four deaths associated with the use of a controversial abortion pill have medical investigators asking why, parents of at least one victim calling for the drug to be taken off the market, and the manufacturer rewording the warning on the pill box.

One death this year, another last year, and two in 2003 were all caused by sepsis, a bloodstream infection. A fifth death connected with the drug has been blamed on a ruptured tubal pregnancy.

Although New York-based Danco Laboratories has defended the pill’s record, the company did agree to change it’s “black-box” warning label so that women who are considering the treatment and their doctors know more about the risk of infection.

The 17,000-member Christian Medical Association is calling for the FDA to pull the drug for a safety review.

“This drug was initially approved in 2000 through a scientifically deficient and politically corrupted process. We documented that corrupt and deficient process in a 90-page brief submitted three years ago, calling on the FDA to pull the drug for review,” said David Stevens, M.D., executive director of the CMA. “The FDA has all the information it needs to get this dangerous drug off the shelves to protect the lives and health of American women.”

(EP News)

Explicit Scenes in Video Game Prompt Call for FTC Investigation

Hidden explicit scenes in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas prompted U.S. lawmakers to ask the Federal Trade Commission July 25 to investigate the video game’s manufacturer, Rockstar Games, and its parent company, New York-based Take Two Interactive Software. But defenders of family values have decried the violent and sexual content of the game and its predecessors for years.

Take Two Interactive first denied the scenes were part of its game but later had to admit the truth after a story by The Associated Press.

Game manufacturers’ unwillingness to take responsibility for their products’ effects is no surprise to organizations like Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family and the Lion and the Lamb Project, which have been warning Americans about violent games for years.

“If you believe Sesame Street taught your 4-year-old something, you’d better believe that video games are teaching your 14-year-old something,” David Walsh, Ph.D., a psychologist and founder of the NIMF, a nonprofit watchdog group, reminds parents.

As early as 2000, four major public health groups—the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry—issued a joint statement to Congress saying that “viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. Its effects are measurable and long-lasting. Moreover, prolonged viewing of media violence can lead to emotional desensitization toward violence in real life.”

(EP News)