Acne sucks, but abortions are evil.

I was left laughing my head off reading this article in the SMH, titled 'Acne drug 'may lead to more abortions.''

The upshot of this one is that extending prescribing rights of Roaccutane to GP's is going to lead to a sudden up-surge in young women seeking abortions. Come again? A brief note about Roaccutane, if you bear with me.

Roaccutane is basically a massive dose of Vitamin A, and it is very effective in treating certain kinds of acne. But Vitamin A, in large doses, also causes birth defects. For this reason, females prescribed Roaccutane are also put on the oral contraceptive pill as a matter of course - because you CANNOT be pregnant while taking Roaccutane.

Presumably, any GP's looking at prescribing Roaccutane for a patient would be issued with such a strict guideline, and hopefully anyone smart enough to qualify in medicine would be able to retain this rather large and important piece of information. Roaccutane - contraindicated in pregnancy. Not so tricky, is it?

However, Dr Stephen Shumack, who is head of the Australasian College of Dermatologists, manages to come out with this stupefying piece of logic;

"The college fears that appropriate people may not be given it, inappropriate people may be given it, and the side-effects may not be managed appropriately.

"And, overall, far more people will be given it, which increases the risk of pregnancies, especially if this is not properly screened for, and then there's more abortions."

What the...? Increase in prescriptions for acne medication have a direct causal link to an increase in rates of conception? At any rate, I doubt that a dermatologist is likely to have any greater skill in 'properly screening' for pregnancy than a GP would do. And I would think that a risk of unwanted pregnancy would be substantially LOWER in a sector of the population who were given explicit information about, and access to, various methods of contraception, than it would in the wider populace.

Yes, Roaccutane is associated with some unpleasant side effects and there is no doubt it should be a prescription-only medication, and not avaialble as an over-the-counter option at the pharmacy. But not everyone in Australia lives in an area where access to a dermatologist is easily available - and that doesn't preclude them from having problems with acne. If I was sixteen years old and living four hours away from the nearest prescribing dermatologist, and my social development and confidence was being hampered by a severe case of acne, I would damn well hope I could get something from my GP that is proven to actually work.

Methinks that Dr Shumack may well be whipping out the old 'ABORTIONS ARE VERY BAD' public moral panic whisk in order to hang onto what is likely to be a lucrative part of private medical practice.