The following is taken from Bette Overell's ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES - Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer (http://www.health.org.nz), pages 276-278:
In New Zealand it was reported in Dominion Sunday Times, October 15 1989 that Dr Charlotte Paul, Auckland Hospital Researcher, published in the NZ Medical Journal that more than 20,000 women every year had been prescribed Depo-Provera, an injectable contraceptive, many without their knowledge or consent, despite the fact that the drug had always been banned in the USA where it caused cancer of the breast and uterus, loss of bone density and anaphylacis (an allergic reaction which causes the patient to stop breathing) and other damage.
The method of testing Depo-Provera carried out by its producers Upjohn prior to prescribing it to women in hospitals, birth control clinics and doctors' surgeries, was, according to information circulated to doctors by Upjohn on Form No. A1.030.1, as follows:
"Endometrial response tests on immature and ovari-ectomized rabbits."
"Subcutaneous injections in experimental animals."
"Tremendous doses in chronic toxicity studies on intact female and spayed immature rats" and "beagle dogs".
The following is an extract from Side Effects as stated in the circular:
"Beagle dogs treated with medroxyprogesterone-acetate developed mammary nodules, some of which were malignant. Although nodules occasionally appeared in control animals, they were benign and intermittent in nature, whereas the nodules in drug-treated animals were larger, more numerous, persistent, and there were some breast malignancies with metastases... their significance with respect to humans has not been established."
At the US Food and Drug Administration Public Board of Enquiry into Depo-Provera in 1983 which unsuccessfully attempted to lift the US ban on the drug, in questioning the relevance of beagle dog trials to human users of the contraceptive, Upjohn argued as follows:
- "Beagles are not appropriate animals for use for such trials."
- "There is no perfect animal model"
- "In a sense the final animal model for a drug to be used on human beings has to be the human."