DUMPING chemicals into women's bodies - specifically into their reproductive systems - has generated billions of dollars in profits for multinational pharmaceutical companies. In the second half of the 20th century these giant companies have created a reproductive technology "market" which they have inundated with "Products" such as the contraceptive pill, the Dalkon Shield, Norplant, Depo-provera, VES, DES and ritodrine (to name just a few).

All of these drugs and appliances have two things in common: (1) they were not properly tested before they were marketed, and (2) they damaged the health of literally millions of women.

But certainly - those of us interested in women's health tell ourselves - these drugs were marketed in the "bad old days," before we knew about the damaged health of so many women; and before the feminist movement adopted a watchdog role and demanded stricter government regulation of such new drugs. Surely, the likelihood of powerful, improperly tested drugs being used on women today is remote.

Enter RU-486, the "abortion -pill," the latest chemical innovation in fertility-control technology. The Canadian lobby for RU-486 has organized a media blitz extolling the advantages of the drug for women as a safe alternative to surgical and suction abortion. MP Dawn Black, NDP critic on the status of women, has written in newspapers across Canada that "we should at least test RU-486 (in Canada) ... then, if and only if RU-486 proves to be safe, we should make it available."

To be sure, the only testing of RU486/prostagiandin prior to 1988 was to determine dosage and did not resolve - or even seriously address - the issue of the drug's safety. As so often happens in cases of drugs aimed at women, marketing of RU486/prostaglandin has preceded determination of the drug's safety.

THE drug's first large-scale test ing has only been under way in France (since 1988) and in England (since 1991). These massive field trials have involved to date more than 100,000 women. Canadian health officials and advocates for women's health, rather than rushing to duplicate these trials, need to study the data they have thus far produced.

Canadians should be aware that by the autumn of 1991 reports from the French trials had already begun to alarm women's health advocates around the world. In September, 1991, a group of women scientists from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Institute on Women and Technology issued a report under the name of "Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering" (FINRRAGE).

"We felt what was being lost in' the political debate was how the drug affects women. In contrast with the groups who are anti-feminist and anti-abortion, the Institute on Women and Technology advocates women's rights to abortion and selfdetermination," said Dr. Janice Raymond of FINRRAGE. (Boston Herald, Sept. 12,1991)

"We cannot allow ... acceptance of a combination drug treatment that has not been investigated critically, and from a nonaligned perspective, i.e.; a perspective not affiliated with the interests of the medical researchers, drug companies, and population control organizations," FINRRAGE continued in its critique of RU-486 (RU-486: Misconceptions, Myths and Morals, Renate Klein, Janice G. Raymond, Lynette J. Durable. Spinifex Press, Australia, 1991, p.7).

FINRRAGE has likened RU-486 to taking a "drug cocktail": (1) RU486, (2) a prostaglandin injection or suppository to induce uterine contractions, (3) an anti-nausea drug, (4) pain medication (needed by 60 per cent of women, with more than 30 per cent requiring a morphine-type drug) and (5) antibiotics, if an infection develops.

FINRRAGE has pointed to the severe , sometimes violent side effects of Prostaglandins and RU-486: nausea, headache, dizziness, diarrhea and bleeding. Post-abortion bleeding is a major complication of an RU-486 abortion and can last up to 35 or 40 days, with a mean duration of eight to 10 days. Some women have required blood transfusions.

In addition, the "gastrointestinal side-effects of Prostaglandins are (often) trivialized, when diarrhea, superimposed on the abortion's physical and psychological demands, is especially de humanizing." (Klein, Raymond and Dumble, p.85)

In April, 1991, FINRRAGE confirms, the first woman was killed in France by an RU-486/prostaglandin abortion; there have been three reported cases of heart attacks; the danger of strokes from the procedure is also acknowledged. The manufacturer warns in its booklet Necessary Facilities that "cardiovascular monitoring equipment, emergency resuscitation medication and equipment, and emergency theatre facilities" must be available during an RU-486 abortion.

LIKEWISE, because of the high (four per cent to seven per cent) failure rate of RU-486 abortions, women in France must sign in advance a document agreeing to a surgical abortion backup.

The reason for this is acknowledged by the manufacturer Roussel/UCLAF's team in The New England Journal of Medicine (March 8, 1990): "The question arises whether the fetus is harmed if the pregnancy continues (one per cent of the pregnancies in this series) ... Prostaglandins have been reported to be teratogenic (harmful to the fetus) in, both animals and humans. Thus, women must be duly informed and understand the potential risks of choosing such a method of pregnancy termination."

Pauline Connor (LI.B.) of Feminists Against Eugenics in Liverpool, England, goes further to report that " the drug's mechanism is extremely complicated. Its effect is not localized or short-term. Its long-term impact on the health of women and their future fertility, and on children subsequently born to women who use it, is unknown. At best it is experimental; at its worst, lethal."

Connor concludes: "What has been presented as a simple, pill-popping exercise is, in fact, an intensely medicalized and painful procedure which can involve up to four clinic visits and last up to 12 days ... RU486 is dangerous, experimental and - ultimately - misogynistic. We oppose it with every means possible."

Undoubtedly, early results from the French field trials raise such grave concerns about its safety as to preclude even testing RU -486 on Canadian women. Canadian women should not serve as guinea pigs for testing a demonstrably dangerous drug.