Home | Previous Page | Print
Source URL: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2000/oct/001004a.html
LifeSiteNews.com
Wednesday October 4, 2000
Media Silent On Ru-486's Nazi Death Camp Pedigree
from http://www.newsmax.com
Oct. 2, 2000
Reprinted with permission
Lost in all the commentary on last week's FDA approval of the abortion pill RU-486 is an inconvenient and extraordinarily chilling detail about the company that invented the drug, Rousell-Uclaf.
Rousell, based in France, developed RU-486 in the 1980s, and after extensive testing the French government approved it for use in 1988. But Rousell's West German parent company, Hoechst AG, did not.
Hoechst had two problems with the idea of making easy abortions available to a mass market. Not only was abortion illegal in largely Catholic pre-unification West Germany, but RU-486 was sure to conjure up memories of the darkest chapter in German history - the Holocaust.
The chiefs at Hoechst AG, now one of the largest chemical companies in the world with over 145,000 employees, did not want their overseas customers to be reminded - or perhaps learn for the first time - about Hoescht's direct link to the National Socialist (Nazi) death camps of World War II.
Hoechst itself was born of the Nuremberg War Tribunal, which disbanded its precursor, the Nazi chemical giant IG Farben. The tribunal convicted twelve Farben executives of war atrocities, including "crimes against humanity, murder, extermination and enslavement."
Hoechst, Bayer and BASF became Farben's direct postwar corporate descendants.
Farbenworks factories at Hoechst, Degesch and Leverkusen worked overtime producing toxic gases for the Third Reich, including the deadly agent Zyklon B - the very poison that was used to exterminate millions in Hitler's gas chambers.
The Buna Rubber facility at Auschwitz was also part of Farbenworks' Nazi operations, which even included a special corporate concentration camp at the site known as Monowitz. But Monowitz was just one of several slave labor camps operated by Hoechst's corporate ancestor throughout the Nazi empire before Hitler's defeat in 1945.
No wonder today's pro-abortion journalists don't want to remind their readers about the connection between America's new abortion pill and the deadly history of the company that invented it.
(c) Copyright: LifeSiteNews.com is a production of Interim Publishing. Permission to republish is granted (with limitation*) but acknowledgement of source is *REQUIRED* (use LifeSiteNews.com).
NEWS TIPS to lsn@lifesitenews.com or call 1-866-787-9947 or (416) 204-1687 ext. 444
Donate to LifeSiteNews.com at http://www.lifesite.net/contribute/
Friday, May 12, 2006
Has the Abortion Pill been Pushed on America?
By David Brody
Capitol Hill Correspondent
CBN.com – WASHINGTON – Did the Clinton administration cross ethical lines in pushing for the approval of the RU-486 abortion pill?
Confidential memos uncovered by the watchdog group, Judicial Watch, show President Clinton and his staff took unprecedented steps to get the drug on the American market. Since its approval, the drug has been linked to the deaths of a number of women.
So far, it’s been on the market for six years. Now, doctors, relatives, and members of Congress want it banned after five questionable deaths and hundreds of injuries. All along, conservative groups have claimed short cuts in the approval process, and that the abortion pill was rushed onto the market.
"We've always been incredibly concerned about the way this drug was approved,” said Lanier Swann of Concerned Women for America. “It was put on the fast track, and that's actually putting it mildly."
The group Judicial Watch went straight to the source, obtaining more than 100 documents from the Clinton Presidential Library. What they found suggests Clinton himself helped get this drug into the hands of women here in America.
"You can read the documents for yourself. What they say flat out is that this is the equivalent of a pro-abortion jihad to bring this about,” Judicial Watch’s Christopher Farrell said.
RU-486 was developed in France, but the memos suggest the Clinton administration wanted it so badly in the U.S. that in his first official act as president, he sent a memo to his Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala saying this: "I direct that you promptly assess initiatives by which the department... can promote the testing, licensing, and manufacturing in the United States of RU-486."
"President Clinton put this pill on the fast track for approval to appease the abortion lobby," Swann added.
The drug's manufacturer and parent company had reservations about bringing RU-486 here. They didn't want to be held responsible for any financial lawsuits.
One memo shows how HHS Secretary Shalala and the FDA commissioner at the time, David Kessler, played a persuasive role. It said, "Both Dr. Kessler and I have taken steps to persuade Roussel, Uclaf and Hoechst to change their position."
In another memo, it appears Shalala even tried to get the companies governments involved saying, "The French and German governments might be displeased to learn that their companies are not accommodating a request made by the United States government."
"There's been this big lie that RU-486 was not a political decision or wasn't pressured through politically. That's a lie,” Farrell said. "This is not my opinion. These are Clinton administration documents. Read them for yourself."
These documents come a year after a CBN News investigation showed that the majority of members on the advisory committee that approved RU-486 had direct ties to the abortion industry. The FDA chairman at the time, David Kessler told us the committee process was fair.
"Let me assure you there was no agenda other than making sure that the very best science, that the best experts in the country look at the question,” Kessler said.
Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) told us he's always been skeptical.
"You would hope that the FDA Drug approval process would not be a politicized one because people's health is at risk and yet it looks like it was in this case," Brownback said.
This issue is getting minimal traction on Capitol Hill. A bill that would pull RU-486 off the market has been around for years. There have also been several hearings, including one next week. But for the most part, the FDA has resisted calls to pull the drug.
However growing medical evidence is at least forcing the FDA to take another look. Meeting in Atlanta Thursday, they focused in on the deadly infections caused by the pill. Conservative groups hope that hearing will lead to some sort of action. They're not holding their breath.
"The question here has become how many women have to die before it’s enough?" Swann asked.
The Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc. © 2006
By David Brody
Capitol Hill Correspondent
CBN.com – WASHINGTON – Did the Clinton administration cross ethical lines in pushing for the approval of the RU-486 abortion pill?
Confidential memos uncovered by the watchdog group, Judicial Watch, show President Clinton and his staff took unprecedented steps to get the drug on the American market. Since its approval, the drug has been linked to the deaths of a number of women.
So far, it’s been on the market for six years. Now, doctors, relatives, and members of Congress want it banned after five questionable deaths and hundreds of injuries. All along, conservative groups have claimed short cuts in the approval process, and that the abortion pill was rushed onto the market.
"We've always been incredibly concerned about the way this drug was approved,” said Lanier Swann of Concerned Women for America. “It was put on the fast track, and that's actually putting it mildly."
The group Judicial Watch went straight to the source, obtaining more than 100 documents from the Clinton Presidential Library. What they found suggests Clinton himself helped get this drug into the hands of women here in America.
"You can read the documents for yourself. What they say flat out is that this is the equivalent of a pro-abortion jihad to bring this about,” Judicial Watch’s Christopher Farrell said.
RU-486 was developed in France, but the memos suggest the Clinton administration wanted it so badly in the U.S. that in his first official act as president, he sent a memo to his Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala saying this: "I direct that you promptly assess initiatives by which the department... can promote the testing, licensing, and manufacturing in the United States of RU-486."
"President Clinton put this pill on the fast track for approval to appease the abortion lobby," Swann added.
The drug's manufacturer and parent company had reservations about bringing RU-486 here. They didn't want to be held responsible for any financial lawsuits.
One memo shows how HHS Secretary Shalala and the FDA commissioner at the time, David Kessler, played a persuasive role. It said, "Both Dr. Kessler and I have taken steps to persuade Roussel, Uclaf and Hoechst to change their position."
In another memo, it appears Shalala even tried to get the companies governments involved saying, "The French and German governments might be displeased to learn that their companies are not accommodating a request made by the United States government."
"There's been this big lie that RU-486 was not a political decision or wasn't pressured through politically. That's a lie,” Farrell said. "This is not my opinion. These are Clinton administration documents. Read them for yourself."
These documents come a year after a CBN News investigation showed that the majority of members on the advisory committee that approved RU-486 had direct ties to the abortion industry. The FDA chairman at the time, David Kessler told us the committee process was fair.
"Let me assure you there was no agenda other than making sure that the very best science, that the best experts in the country look at the question,” Kessler said.
Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) told us he's always been skeptical.
"You would hope that the FDA Drug approval process would not be a politicized one because people's health is at risk and yet it looks like it was in this case," Brownback said.
This issue is getting minimal traction on Capitol Hill. A bill that would pull RU-486 off the market has been around for years. There have also been several hearings, including one next week. But for the most part, the FDA has resisted calls to pull the drug.
However growing medical evidence is at least forcing the FDA to take another look. Meeting in Atlanta Thursday, they focused in on the deadly infections caused by the pill. Conservative groups hope that hearing will lead to some sort of action. They're not holding their breath.
"The question here has become how many women have to die before it’s enough?" Swann asked.
The Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc. © 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
