Last week, I wrote about new findings that the "Abortion Pill", Mifeprex (mifepristone), seems to block breast cancer in mice. This is fantastic news for reproductive choice advocates, because it puts the nail in the coffin for the abortion / breast cancer myth promulgated by the Christianists and their pseudoscience enablers in D.C.
But the news is even better. The abortion pill seems to be a fantastically effective treatment for uterine fibroids, too.
This is from the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology [emphasis mine]:
In a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial, women getting Mifeprex also had less bleeding and lower rates of anemia, Kevin Fiscella, M.D., of the University of Rochester, and colleagues, reported in the December issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Improvements were so dramatic that 19 of the 20 women remaining in the treatment group at the end of the study correctly guessed that they had been receiving Mifeprex, compared with nine of 17 in the placebo group who correctly guessed they were not receiving the drug, said Dr. Fiscella and colleagues.
Now, this is good news for two reasons: 1) There is no current biomedical alternative for this condition besides surgery (though Chinese medicine can be somewhat successful for small fibroids - I'm a Lic. Acupuncturist). 2) This keeps another medical use for this drug out there, so it has a much harder time being banned by the fundies. Obviously, this does not mean that having an abortion is going to get rid of fibroids, or prevent cancer, as the dosage and administration are significantly different.
But it provides a basis to keep these drugs around, and therefore fend off returning to the coat-hanger era hopefully.