National Security Study Memorandum 200

[Jan Klimkowski]

Magda - more excellent work. Thank you! :handkiss:

The use of a chemical sclerotic sterilization agent on poor women in developing countries, in field conditions, needs to be seen through the lens of NSSM200.

Below is the transcript of the part the BBC2 Horizon film, The Human Laboratory, which investigated quinacrine use.

BETSY HARTMANN: It's not just in the United States case the government, but there are also a whole range of private foundations that are funding the building of a population control movement.

NARRATOR: One private organisation is run by two doctors from America's southern states who believe they've found the answer for Third World women in a drug called Quinacrine.

DR. STEPHEN MUMFORD: Quinacrine is the most important development in contraception since the birth control pill. It has an enormous potential for preventing births and we're talking about literally billions of births.

DR. ELTON KESSEL: We have trials of the Quinacrine method going in some 17 countries like India, China, Bangladesh, and the trials are going very well. 100,000 women have had this method without a single fatality being reported.

NARRATOR: Dr. Elton Kessel was the founding director of Family Health International. He now researches Quinacrine in a worldwide operation, masterminded from Dr. Mumford's basement in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Quinacrine is inserted into the top of the womb where it causes inflammation and scarring in the Fallopian tube, in theory blocking the tube with scar tissue and preventing the sperm from reaching the egg.

STEPHEN MUMFORD: It's a very simple procedure, takes only a few minutes. It can be done in very primitive settings by people who do not necessarily have a lot of clinical skills. Quinacrine is clearly the cheapest method available in the world and in fact the second cheapest method would probably be more than 100 times as expensive as the Quinacrine method. For $10,000's worth of Quinacrine pellets, 70,000 women can be sterilised.

INTERVIEWER: Is that a lot of women?

STEPHEN MUMFORD: That's a lot of women, and a lot of grateful women.

DR. AMY POLLACK: The story of Quinacrine is very unusual. It amazes many people that, despite the fact that this drug has not been approved by any major regulatory body for use in women, it's been used and distributed to over, you know, 80,000, maybe 100,000 women around the world who've been told that it's a safe and effective method and therefore agreed to use the method. How's it been done? Just a couple of guys out there running around with suitcases full of the drug who distribute the drug to doctors, primarily, and there's an appeal because it's inexpensive and it's easy to use.

NARRATOR: But some scientists believe the drug could put women's lives at risk - from cancer and ectopic pregnancy. And they question this entire approach to sterilisation.

PROF. SHREE MULAY: This method of producing scar tissue is extremely barbaric. to try to damage the tissue so that you produce inflammation and block the tubes that way I think is extremely crude. It is imprecise for sure because one does not know where exactly that is going to take place and it causes a tremendous amount of pain because of the inflammation. There has been a long history of chemical sterilisation research and this history is really an ugly one and it's quite a shocking one because all kinds of agents have been used - sulphuric acid, formaldehyde - all of these agents which actually burn the tissue and cause production of scar tissue. Chemical sterilisation was first tried out by the Nazis in their very first experiments in the death camps. That it has been picked up in the 60s, 70s and the 80s and been promoted as rescue for the women of the Third World I think is quite extraordinary.

STEPHEN MUMFORD: We're seeing 500,000 women die per year. Every day women die because of unwanted fertility that could be treated with this method.

INTERVIEWER: And you're going to save them?

STEPHEN MUMFORD: That's... I'm not going to save them, they're going to save themselves by electing this if the thing is made available, if the method is made available. We know these women want this method.

AMY POLLACK: What kills women in childbirth is horrible obstetrical services totally inadequate services that exist around the world. Not only are they bad services, but they're services provided for women who want to have children, and those women are not going to choose sterilisation. So women who don't choose sterilisation and choose to get pregnant are not going to be saved by Quinacrine. The numbers that are presented to us don't take that into account at all.

NARRATOR: The World Health Organisation has stated that no further Quinacrine research in women is justified until further laboratory tests have been completed.

AMY POLLACK: We don't have answers to critical questions about the long-term impact of Quinacrine on women, and until we have those answers, and we can find those answers, we should not be using this drug in women, period.

NARRATOR: So who is funding the research?

BETSY HARTMANN: A student of mine was examining who was funding the anti-immigration movement in the United States and searching through the tax records of various foundations, when she chanced upon the tax records of the Leland Fikes Foundation and found to her amazement that that Foundation was not only funding the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which is very anti-immigrant, but Mumford's work on Quinacrine. It's very scary that you have a private foundation funding both an anti-immigration group and a form of unethical contraception. I think there's a racial fear involved in this politics.

STEPHEN MUMFORD: My God this is they call this an anti-immigrant organisation. I think that the Federation of American Immigration Reform is a highly patriotic institution, that is correct. I mean very few Americans agree that we should have open borders and FAIR's position is that we should not have open borders and that has been the focus of their efforts since they were created. I'm very happy to identify with the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

ELTON KESSEL: You know, if you open the borders of the United States, the United States will become a developing country.

STEPHEN MUMFORD: That's correct. Most Americans do not want to live in these conditions, including myself.

NARRATOR: They've had sympathisers for their philosophy in high places.

STEPHEN MUMFORD: I've just completed a book and George Bush was just leaving the directorship of the CIA at that time. George Bush read the synopsis again, which said over-population is a graver threat to US security than the nuclear threat. George Bush says I agree with everything you're saying here in this synopsis and I can assure you that the people at the CIA agree with you too, so at that point I knew that at the highest levels of our government this issue was being discussed.

The full transcript can be seen at the DPF thread below:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/....php?t=620