Research
abandoned
on contraceptive vaccine to ‘immunize’ women against pregnancy
Washington D.C. - A leading contraceptive researcher has abandoned her
attempts to create a vaccine that would render a woman “immune” from
pregnancy. The Population Research Institute lauded the end of the
research, which it said tried to make a woman’s body treat pregnancy as
a disease. Based on research into women who are infertile because of
antibodies that inhibit sperm from fertilizing the egg, Dr. Donnie
Dunbar had hoped to develop a vaccine that would trick a healthy
woman’s immune system into a hostile reaction to her own eggs. She
intended the vaccine to help combat what she saw as the “world
population problem.”
Tests which injected rabbits with pig proteins caused an autoimmune
response, but it completely destroyed the ovaries.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t just looking at preventing fertilization
now; we generated a complete autoimmune disease, which is also known as
premature ovarian failure,” Dunbar said, according to the Population
Research Institute.
“I am responsible for killing this vaccine for further human research,
and I made some people in my biotech company and some other people very
unhappy.”
The Population Research Institute (PRI) described her vaccine as “an
insidious attempt to make the body treat pregnancy as a disease.”
However, the organization said her refusal to develop the vaccine for
humans showed “an integrity often absent among anti-fertility
researchers.”
The former contraceptive vaccine is now being developed for possible
use as a sterilizing agent for dogs and cats and for the culling of the
African elephant population.
Source:
CNA
Publish
Date:
December 1, 2009
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