A New Jersey doctor is investigating whether abortion pills can help patients with lung cancer, and has met a number of roadblocks on his quest for answers.
Dr. Jerome Check believes that the most common abortion-inducing drug, mifepristone, can help patients with lung cancer live longer than they would without the drug, according to The Inquirer. Check faces a problem however, because while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave him permission to test his theory on 40 patients with advanced stages of lung cancer, few oncologists will send him patients for the study. Thus far, Check has received only two patients who are currently taking mifepristone in an effort to prolong their lives.
“I was naive … I thought I’d have to turn people away,” Check said, expecting to meet hoards of patients eager to participate in his trial.
Check heads the Cooper Institute for Reproductive Hormonal Disorders in Melrose Park, New Jersey.
“It’s definitely an interesting drug,” Ohio State University oncologist Claire F. Verschraegen said, The Inquirer reports. “I appreciate his effort to push it forward. But trying to do it himself when he doesn’t have oncology training, it’s a slippery slope.”
Taken for abortion purposes, mifepristone blocks progesterone receptors in the uterus, resulting in fetal starvation or suffocation. Women then take misoprostol to expel the baby. The process has a 93 to 98 percent rate of successfully killing the unborn child. (RELATED: Idaho Requires Docs To Provide ‘Abortion Reversal’ Info To Women Seeking To Abort)
Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women and kills roughly 154,000 people every year in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society.
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