If this ends up working out, I am going to be so happy. The hormones in the Pill mean that I have crippling depression all the time, and I know a few other people who react to it in the same way.

Then again, it does lessen the suffering for women who are sluts!! Which means that even if they end up making it in Scotland there's not a snowball's chance of it getting FDA approval, much like the herpes vaccine.

This is depressing. As someone who is crippled by severe depression when I use the pill I would welcome an alternative to hormone based birth control.

IANAD, but I think it might be a sort of misleading to tout its non-hormonal aspects; it still screws with your hormones after all. It's different, yes, but it does change the normal action of the hormones in your body.

On the other hand, since this is a very low dose of RU486, you might be able to talk your doctor into prescribing it to you for off-label contraception use.

The prostaglandin system is extremely complicated, insufficiently known and not something I would like to mess with on a daily basis. (It's not a problem for me to do it occasionally, which is why I can take NSAIDs, but I've seen the effects of long time NSAID use.)

What about the gastric lining? What about renal blood flow? What about inflammatory response and the immune system? What about hemostatic balance?

To therese:

Mifepristone is not a prostaglandin, but it is often used in conjunction with prostaglandins when used for abortions. The prostaglandin does have a similar name, misoprostol. Mifepristone is a progesterone antagonist -- meaning it is similar in molecular shape to progesterone, binds to progesterone receptors, but does not cause the effect that progesterone would cause if it were bound to those receptors. Basically, it prevents progesterone from having any effect on the body.

If I understand it right, and Mifepristone is THE drug that prevents menstruation, then I welcome it with all my heart, and I expect most other endometriosis sufferers to do the same.

I belong to the small minority who does not have problems with pills either (I take them continuously to prevent menstruation). But now I am getting too old for pills, because of the estrogene in theme increases heart problem risks. Probably I am also too old when Mifepristone gets out to the market. But anyway, I ahd to make my comment on it.

I think this is awful, but not so much for the reasons already being discussed. In the article in a Scottish paper it was talking about all the benfits of this 'new amazing pill' and then stated that 'women who have never taken any combination pill are at more risk of breast cancer' This is blatent scare mongering if I ever saw it.
Also in the article is stated that the 'pill' was tested on 'volunteers' in England, Asia and Africa. Wonderful, lets just feed this new drug to unsuspecting women in africa and asia as they are easy to convince...great.
On another note, overlooking the minority who DO have awful heavy painful periods for the timebeing, why the Hell would anyone want their periods to stop completely anyway? When will the male-led society accept our female-ness and allow us to menstruate in piece. Its NOT dirty and we DON'T need your crappy harmfully bleached sanitary protection, and 'feminine hygiene' products thank-you-very-much.

Uma, I think a lot of women may disagree with you on that -- menstruation may be, uh, female-power, but it's pretty icky and annoying and just a huge headache and I personally would be glad to not have to go through it on a monthly basis. I don't see anything particularly glorifying about my own period, and I don't have exceptionally heavy or painful flows.

On another note, overlooking the minority who DO have awful heavy painful periods for the timebeing, why the Hell would anyone want their periods to stop completely anyway? When will the male-led society accept our female-ness and allow us to menstruate in piece.

Actually monthly menstruation is an artifact of living in industrial society, not the natural state of affairs. Women in pre-industrial hunter-gatherer societies, or in basic agrarian societies, are estimated to menstruate little more than once or twice a year, due to how often they're pregnant and how long they continue to breastfeed.

There's nothing natural about a monthly period for years at a time, and it's almost certainly the reason that breast and uterine cancer rates skyrocket when women start delaying childbirth, having less children, and using birth control (even condoms.) I mean, menstruate all you like; it's killing you. It's your choice but surely you can understand why some women would want to discontinue a a practice that is literally harmful to their bodies?

Chet, if I recall correctly, women have much longer lifespans now than they did when most people were in hunter-gatherer societies. If women only had 20 or 30 periods in them before the cancer set in, we'd be dropping like flies at 20 or 22. I'm tempted to say you're barking up the wrong tree here, but I am not sure that you're at a tree to begin with, or even if the direction you're barking in is up.

Laina: that will teach me not to comment before breakfast.

Chet, if I recall correctly, women have much longer lifespans now than they did when most people were in hunter-gatherer societies. If women only had 20 or 30 periods in them before the cancer set in, we'd be dropping like flies at 20 or 22.

Who said anything of the sort? Seriously, YN5, if you'd like to be part of the discussion, you should grapple with my actual points and not ridiculous strawmen.

Did I claim that cancer was universal after 30 periods? I challenge you to find that statement in my post.

The point is that every period is a massive burst of cell division in the uterus and breasts, and you roll the cancer dice for every such burst you undergo. And those dividing cells are a hundred times more susceptible to environmental mutagens than other cells.

Look, roll the dice. It's up to you. If you think it's so great and natural, have all the periods you like. But it isn't that natural, if by "natural" you mean "how it was for the countless thousands of years of human evolutionary development." If by "natural" you mean "what my body is doing", then by that logic it's unreasonable to treat congenital disease.

It's a roll of the dice, and the jackpot is uterine or breast cancer. (The latter, you may remember, kills 48,800 American women every year.) Is it really so unreasonable to suggest that a lot of women want to roll those dice as rarely as possible?

Actually Chet's completely and utterly right. The artifact of the monthly period is something that was part and parcel of the inventor's attempt to create something 'natural' that would get the Catholic Church's approval (which it initially did, but of course, we all know the CC's position on anything has nothing to do with is good for women).

Having 12 or so periods a year over the course of her fetile life is simply not actually healthy for a woman. That amount of cell-division is never really good.

That's why the new birth control pills out regulate you to approximately 4 periods a year (I'm sure everyone has seen the adverts, with the four red dots in a square?), which reduces your cancer risks.

So, I'm not sure a pill that 'allows' you to have unregulated periods is such a good thing.

Thanks, Chet, for bringing this up.