Please click on the link below to download the
front page of the brochure from the „International
Symposium on Advances in Contraception and
Contragestion“.
Please click on the link below to download the
scientific programme of the brochure from the
„International
Symposium on Advances in Contraception and
Contragestion“.
Symposium
1991
The purpose of this interdisciplinary symposium was to
seek an international forum to critically review state of
the art procedures, including natural method and discuss
current development and research-in-progress projects in
basic and clinical research related to planned parenthood
with the help of contraception and contragestion.
Moreover the diagnoses of conception ( Pregnancy-testing)
was also to be dealt with at this symposium.
The symposium was of particular importance in the
light of the study on birth control in the U.S. issued by
the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Accordingly,
”not only were all the available methods of
contraception inconvenient, only partially effective or
potentially risky, but the array of devices to choose
from was getting smaller, not larger”. Considering
the devices available in other countries, the situation
outside the U.S. was not much different.
INTRODUCTION
On behalf of MEDADVICE, it is a great pleasure for me
to welcome you all to this
”International symposium on Advances in
Contraception and Contagestion”
being held in the backyard of the headquarters of the
World Health Organisation.
More than five billion people live on this planet
today - too often barely so. In many countries chronic
disaster exists because of overpopulation. It is high
time that we rethink our priorities and start worrying
more about the people yet to be born. Who will feed them?
And provide them even the basic amenities of life &
health care?
It is estimated that more than one third of the 140
million pregnancies that occurred in developing countries
in the year 1988 were unintended and undesirable.
Moreover, it is also claimed that one third to two thirds
of the 25 to 40 million annual abortions in these
countries are conducted adopting illegal procedures under
most pathetic conditions leading to a high degree of
mortality and morbidity. The safe Motherhood Initiative
meeting convened by the World Health Organisation in
July, 1988 drew attention to the magnitude of maternal
mortality and morbidity around the world. Accordingly
each year at least half a million women die from
pregnancy, birth or abortion, and 99% the deaths are
concentrated in developing countries which account for
86% of the world’s births. In Africa, a women has a
1-in-14 lifetime risk of maternal mortality against
1-in-4000 to 1-in-10,000 in developed countries. Bearing
the socio-economic constraints and cultural attitudes in
developing countries in mind, there is clearly a great
unmet demand for simpler, cheaper and particularly more
discrete natural methods of contraception in many of
these countries.
In the absence of other possibilities, contragestion
has, apparently, become an important means of
contraception in many Eastern European countries.
Although to a lesser extent than in the developing world,
it is because contraceptives are not readily accessible
and because of poor social conditions, including
overcrowding, inadequate health care and the lack of
facilities for children. It is estimated that during
recent years, up to 600,000 abortions were performed
annually in Poland, mostly on marriedwomen, who felt they
could not cope with a large family, In spite of the
prohibition of abortion, millions of Romanian women had
illegal abortions and thousand died in back-street
clinics.
For a country where the drug development is most
advance, the U.S. has been conspicuously backward in the
field of contraception research. Thus amongst 57 million
U.S. women of childbearing age, about 6 million unwanted
pregnancies occur and, unfortunately above 1,6 million
elective abortions are performed each year. It is firmly
beloved that up to half of the premature terminations
could be prevented if women had better birth-control
alternatives than are available today. Till the recent
introduction of ”Norplant”, not a single
fundamentally new approach to contraception has been
approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since
the Pill and the IUD (intra uterine device) became
available almost three decades ago. Moreover, although
essentially an old contraceptive being offered now as a
new delivery system, Norplant is, disturbingly enough,
not yet commercially available in many other countries
including Switzerland, so called Mecca of drug
research.
Last but not least, to be borne in mind is the fact
that even the most effective forms of contraception can
only provide limited protection against pregnancy, so
that unwanted pregnancies can still occur. As long as a
woman cannot either legally or morally be forced to bear
a child conceived in rape or known to be born to be
permanently invalid, or under certain circumstances even
at a great risk to her own life, it is a moral duty of
medical scientists to develop devices of contragestion to
ensure her maximum safety and wellbeing no matter what
her ultimate choice is. However, it is up to the health
authorities of the individual countries and may be even
the World Health Organisation to ensure the
non-prolification of such devices and prevent their
misuse, rather than banning them outright. Moreover,
notwithstanding the highly vocal criticism of the
pro-life crusaders, a due compassion for the demands of
the pro-choice advocates world wide has also to be
provided for. Most of the major developments in medicine,
including the era of modern contraception, have
invariably been controversial. Yet, the conflict of
opinion is healthy, because it can lead to a betterment
of knowledge.
These are some of the burning issues to be addressed
at this symposium. The unequivocal purpose is to make
world aware of where we stand today regarding the
controlled human reproduction, be it contraception or
contrgestion, and what ought to be done in the future to
improve the plight of women world wide, regardless of the
state of progress of the country they live in.
We are particularly pleased to have the pioneers of
the modern contraception & contragestion research not
only attending this symposium but also actively
participating therein; from Prof. Carl Djerassi who made
the first synthetic steriodal contraceptive possible, to
Prof. Etienne-Emile Baulieu, who was mainly responsible
for the development of Mifepristone (RU 486), only to
name a few. While scrutinising the literature in search
of potential contributors to this symposium, who are
among the leading scientists and clinicians in the field
of contraceptive research and who could provide an
unbiased view of the available information, we repeatedly
came across the names Thus, we still hope that the
ultimate aim of this symposium, namely to provoke new
programmes of research for simpler and particularly safer
methods of controlled human production will be adequately
met. For, to improve the quality of life world wide and
to be able to guaranty minimum means of survival, mankind
must control it`s own multiplication.
