Abortion Ban Could Be Boon to Drug Firms
Few Supreme Court decisions have ever dramatically altered the nation’s medical research agenda. But the current term could see a ruling that could do that and revitalize a stagnant multibillion-dollar industry as well.
Should the court take its current opportunity to revise Roe vs. Wade and effectively free the states to ban abortion, the odds are that there will be intense public pressure for better research and innovation in contraception.
“Ironically, if abortion is no longer available or only available under much more restrictive circumstances, that will be a great stimulus for contraceptive research,” asserts Dr. Sheldon J. Segal, distinguished scientist at the Population Council, a not-for-profit foundation that funds contraception education and research.
Segal points out that while the domestic market for oral contraceptives alone, for example, now exceeds $1.5 billion annually, a hostile legal climate combined with the polarizing impact of the abortion debate has yielded a comparatively laggard contraceptives industry. “We are a third-rate nation in regard to the availability of contraception,” Segal maintains, “not only compared to our industrial cousins but to the Third World as well.”
For example, Segal points to the unavailability of “injectable contraceptives” that can prevent conception for up to three months. “Over 10 million women in 90 countries have used them safely, but we don’t have them in America,” he says.
“There’s a huge market out there and it’s not being well served,” agrees Dr. Luigi Mastroianni Jr., director of the human reproduction division at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and chairman of a recent National Research Council panel on contraceptive development. “I think that ultimately we will be seeing a reverse technology transfer from Third World countries to America because their governments are serious about contraceptive research.”
Indeed, a National Institutes of Health spokesperson acknowledges that research expenditures in reproductive biology have--in constant-dollar terms--been flat for nearly 20 years. The entire fiscal 1990 Health and Human Services Department budget (which includes the National Institutes of Health) for contraceptive development was about $25 million, far less than what a typical pharmaceutical company would spend on the annual development of a single drug.
While Congress and the Bush Administration recently launched five new reproductive biology research centers--three to look at contraception issues, two to address infertility--total funding was under $6 million.
“That’s a national disgrace,” insists Mastroianni. He argues that there are tremendous--and marketable--research opportunities in this area. “Infertility and contraceptive research have a common denominator--reproductive biology,” he says. “If you know how it’s turned on, you can figure out how it’s turned off, and vice versa. I think there may be tremendous spinoffs from both contraceptive and infertility research.”
Indeed, Mastroianni points to recent understandings in sperm/egg interactions--the chemical communications--that offer both new approaches to help infertile couples conceive as well as design low-risk but effective contraceptives.
Similarly, new delivery systems for contraceptives are being tested. Just as people are now using transdermal nicotine patches to help give up smoking, family planning experts predict that such unobtrusive patches will soon be used to dispense contraceptive agents.
To be sure, the RU-486 “abortion pill” also has the potential to become a best-selling drug (whether FDA-approved or not) if the abortion option becomes drastically limited.
But the real issue, asserts Carl Djerassi, the co-creator of The Pill, isn’t research breakthroughs or technological innovations or new pills. “It’s how do you get the pharmaceutical companies interested?” he says.
Djerassi and others argue that the best spur to contraception innovation would be a “no-fault insurance” approach that would require manufacturers to create a special contingency fund for problems. That may be true.
However, a Supreme Court ruling that threatened to eliminate the abortion option would unquestionably set market forces into play. To be sure, abortion is not simply a form of contraception. But the profile of the contraception option would be unavoidably raised by any action the Supreme Court took to limit Roe vs. Wade.
Indeed, the Population Council’s Segal says he now detects renewed interest by several major pharmaceutical houses in the potential of a contraceptives market in a post-Roe vs. Wade world. What’s more, the contraceptive marketplace in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union could ultimately prove quite profitable. Family planning--and the tools to achieve it--is inherently a global business, and American companies may believe that they have to be participants.
Michael Schrage is a writer, consultant and research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He writes this column independently for The Times.
