CONSERVATIVES GIVE BIRTH TO STERILIZING DRUG

QUINACRINE is what Congress gets for subverting family planning.

Quinacrine is an anti-malarial drug that causes sterilization when inserted
directly into the uterus. It's inexpensive -- about a penny; it's fairly
easy to administer, and it doesn't require surgery.

It also may be dangerous. Quinacrine is suspected to cause cancer, although
scientists don't know for sure. There have not been valid studies to prove
its long-term effects.

But Quinacrine has been used by 100,000 women in 17 nations who desperately
want to stop having more children. And the two Americans responsible for
pushing quinacrine in the back channels of the developing world have no
intention of putting the drug through rigorous scientific trials.

The Wall Street Journal published a long front-page story about quinacrine
and its backers last week. It is not, as one might suspect, a profile of
greed. Contraceptive researchers Stephen Mumford, 55, and Elton Kessel, 78,
have not made money from quinacrine. Their non-profit Center for Research on
Population and Security operates out of Mumford's basement in Chapel Hill,
N.C.

What drives Mumford is fear of immigration driven by overpopulation. What
sustains the drug's manufacture and distribution is the $1 million he has
collected from like-minded donors, including the rainmaker of right-wing
causes, the Richard Scaife Family Foundation.

Quinacrine offers a cautionary tale of what happens when companies stop
investing in contraceptive research and when American conservatives succeed
in attacking family planning.

Nearly all the major world family planning organizations, such as the World
Health Organization, oppose quinacrine. Some foreign governments have banned
its use. (It has never been distributed in the United States.)

It also has been administered unethically, to women who were never told that
quinacrine was for sterilization, not contraception.

But its use has flourished in high-birth nations like Vietnam and India,
where birth-control clinicians have decided the sight of women dying in
childbirth and overwhelmed by poverty overrides the risk of cancer and
painful side-effects of the drug. They see no affordable alternative to
quinacrine.

That's where Congress comes in. The U.S. government once was the world's
chief advocate and supporter of family planning. But in 1996, after the
Republican takeover of the House, Congress cut money for it by $190 million,
35 percent. The United States is now spending a third of its target
obligation, which was set in a world population conference in Cairo four
years ago.

Worse, conservatives have managed to mix family planning into the acid
debate over abortion. In the Reagan years, Congress had already succeeded in
banning family planning money for abortions. Now congressional conservatives
have passed legislation banning family planning money to any organization
that even lobbies for abortion rights. And to try to force President Clinton
to sign it, they are holding $1 billion in back dues to the United Nations
as a hostage.

It's in the United States' interest to provide women of the developing world
with safe and effective means of birth control. Short of government funding,
however, many women are turning to private funders' unsafe alternative:
sterilization by an untested drug.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett