Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor:

I am a family physician and I am disturbed by the behavior of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding RU-486 ["The Pill that's hard to swallow," YH, 1/19/01]. Congress is now investigating the FDA and its rapid approval of this drug. It seems that the FDA broke its own rules. They gave it "fast track" priority for no reason. This priority allows certain safety steps to be skipped. Most would agree that time is of the essence for HIV, cancer, and other life-threatening diseases. But pregnancy is far from life-threatening.

Side effects of RU-486 such as pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea have been severe enough to put women in the hospital. The most serious concern, however, is bleeding. Women taking RU-486 usually bleed for at least a week or two, with nine percent bleeding for 30 days or more. The amount of blood lost is significant, nearly four times the average loss from a standard surgical suction curettage abortion. Two percent in the carefully controlled clinical trials hemorrhaged and two percent required "surgical intervention" to stop the bleeding. At least one out of every 100 women in the trials had to be hospitalized.

The seriousness of these so-called "adverse events" should not be minimized. One Iowa woman participating in the U.S. trials lost between one half and two-thirds of her total blood volume and probably would have died if she had not had emergency surgery (Des MoinesRegister, 9/21/95). The sponsor of the trial simply passed this off as normal, telling the press that this was "within the context of what happened before [in France]."

The FDA has also overlooked the dangers of the drug, Cytotec, that must be used with RU-486 to finish the abortion. There have been 30 documented cases of uterine rupture and eight cases of infant death from Cytotec in just the past three years. There is also the case of Margaret O'Connor, who died from Cytotec in 1997. The company that produces the drug, Searle, has come out strongly against the use of their drug during pregnancy. They know very well of the very serious dangers.

I am ashamed of my profession, especially the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Medical Association, who support the FDA and the reckless use of these drugs. For the sake of "freedom of choice," they are putting women in danger. 

—Thomas Messe M.D. Groton, CT

Athletes are a valuable commodity at Yale 

Dear Editor: 

I had several problems with the question raised by your article "Should Yale abandon intercollegiate athletics?" [YH, 2/2/01]. I will admit that I have not finished reading the book The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, but I have shown it to a friend who is a statistician. He told me that if I got him all the statistics used in the book and told him what I wanted to prove, he would take that information and reach my conclusions. I have since talked to a couple of other statisticians who confirmed that while numbers never lie, they can be made to tell several stories.

Another fact that should be noted about athletes recruited at Yale is that for three sports—basketball, football, and hockey—there is the Academic Index, which is the average of the GPAs of the entire previous four classes accepted at the institution. The recruits for each of these sports teams must meet this average. This is even more stringent than the acceptance standards for geographic diversity. There is also the case in which a top science candidate may have lesser verbal scores than other candidates, but will be accepted for his scientific acumen.

Not to give athletes the same sort of special consideration would be discriminatory. Furthermore, any claim that athletes do not contribute to a school as much as other students is completely unfounded. Just look at the article "Athletes reach out to New Haven community" in the same issue. As co-chair of "Youth Days at Yale," I have had many opportunities to work with Yale athletes and see the tremendous contribution that they make to the community. On Thurs., Jan. 15, Yale football Captain Peter Mazza, JE '01, will address some 3,000 eighth-grade students at the Walter Camp Football Foundation's Stay in School rally. I have constantly had the opportunity to call on Yale's athletes to assist in helping the children of the greater New Haven community.

Let's thank, rather than criticize, Yale athletes and recognize their contributions to this school and society in general. 

—Donald F. Scharf, BR '55

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