Doctors Seek to Test French Abortion Pill : Health: New nationwide group hopes to persuade manufacturer to send RU-486 to this country. Protests halted plans for shipments in 1990.

A group of doctors Thursday announced the formation of a national organization that will fight to make the controversial French abortion pill, RU-486, available for use in American research.

As thousands of doctors arrived for the 73rd annual meeting of the American College of Physicians, several conferees joined officials of women’s advocacy groups in a news conference to tout their group and its campaign, which they hope will prompt the European drug manufacturer to improve access to RU-486 in the United States.

“We believe they are disregarding the welfare of our patients due to political pressures exerted by vocal anti-abortion groups (in the United States),” said Dr. Daniel Stone, chairman of the newly formed Los Angeles-based group, Physicians for RU-486.

“We are not asking the manufacturers of RU-486 to enter into a political controversy. We are asking them to wash their hands of the politics of this issue by supplying the drug for all appropriate research.”

RU-486, a steroid manufactured by the French company Roussel-Uclaf, has been used since 1988 in France to induce abortions during the early stage of pregnancy. A number of French doctors maintain that the drug is safer than surgical abortion. According to some studies, the drug--used in concert with prostaglandin--is 96% effective in terminating a pregnancy by causing a miscarriage during the first weeks of pregnancy.

As a result of some recent studies, RU-486 has also been viewed as a potential treatment of a form of breast cancer, AIDS and an endocrine disorder known as Cushing’s syndrome.

When Roussel-Uclaf officials first considered shipping the drug to the United States in the late 1980s, they were inundated by criticisms and threats by U.S. anti-abortion groups.

More than 500,000 postcards were mailed by National Right to Life Committee members to the company’s U.S. subsidiary, said Michaelene Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the San Diego chapter of the California Pro Life Council.

The drug’s “only proven use is to destroy an unborn child’s life--and we are opposed to that,” Jenkins said. “If the research is not to produce abortions, we are not opposed to it.”

That distinction was lost on the French manufacturer. Company officials decided in 1990 not to send shipments to the United States, where research was under way at the National Institutes of Health and USC Medical Center. That decision shut down much of the research in the United States.

Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Susan Cruzan said that some research is ongoing at NIH. But she added that the number of RU-486 studies is confidential. Before the drug can be marketed in the United States, the company must apply to the Food and Drug Administration for approval--a process that can take up to two years, Cruzan said. No application has been filed.

Stone and others believe that researchers hit a wall when they try to obtain the drug for studies.

Groups that have come out in support of greater access to RU-486 include the American Medical Assn., American Assn. for Advancement of Science, and the League of Women Voters of California. Physicians for RU-486 has about 100 members and hopes to recruit some of the 5,000 doctors attending the three-day San Diego conference.