The science is unequivocal. Fifty years after the FDA approved the pill, chemical contraception is bad for women, couples, society and the environment
This year we “celebrate” the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, or “the pill.”
For the 40th anniversary of the pill, PBS produced a thorough retrospective on its history. The material is still on the PBS website and is an invaluable resource for those interested in this subject.
The story PBS tells is fascinating and, without meaning to denigrate PBS, the broadcaster tells the history of the pill in a surprisingly honest way — surprising not only because of PBS’ usual biases, but also because the pill is a subject that involves a great deal of dishonesty. PBS is even honest about the dishonesty and even simple foolishness that surrounds the pill. For instance, when it reports on early efforts to get the pharmaceutical companies — including Searle, which eventually became the first company to receive FDA approval to sell birth control pill — to develop a chemical contraceptive, PBS notes:
“Beyond the legal and religious complications, Searle executives just didn’t believe there would be a huge market for an oral contraceptive. The men at Searle found it inconceivable that any woman would consider taking pills every single day just for contraception. The prevailing wisdom was that no healthy woman would ever willingly take a drug that neither treated nor prevented disease.”
Deceptive drug trial
Sadly they were oh so wrong. Women have proven wretchedly willing to “take a drug that neither treated nor prevented disease” and, indeed, which has been plausibly identified as a cause of lethal diseases.
PBS also noted that some of the early research that was done circumvented laws against contraception by purporting to do research to help women with problems with infertility. Not only were some of the trials illegal, some of them involved giving women in psychiatric hospitals drugs without their knowledge or consent.
Deception was even written into the pill; since the pill creates a pseudo-pregnancy, women on the pill would not be menstruating. Researchers, however, devised the pill so that women would experience pseudo menstruation each month. This was done so that the pill might seem more “natural” and thus perhaps make it more acceptable to the Catholic Church.
Researchers chose Puerto Rico as a place to test the pill because they reasoned if they could get a poor Catholic country to accept contraception, it would be an easy sell elsewhere.
The fact that three women died during the course of the trials did not provoke researchers to examine the risks of taking the pill.
In fact, contraceptives are regularly tested or used without proper testing in Third World countries. Another kind of pill, Quinacrine, has the same sordid history. Quinacrine, a drug available in pellet form, was used for some time in Third World countries to sterilize women. It works by burning surfaces of the fallopian tube and uterus, thereby closing off the fallopian tubes. Huge problems arose with the practice, however. For instance, many of the lesions created by the burning became infected. Many women died of sepsis from infected wounds before the World Health Organization made sterilizers cease the practice.
Health dangers
The disturbing amount of duplicity and falsehood surrounding contraception continues to this day. Neither pharmaceutical companies nor physicians have been honest about the medical dangers of chemical contraceptives. The pill launched a whole set of chemical contraceptives, including Depo Provera, Ortho Evra, also known as the Patch, and Norplant. More and more studies (see the April 2009 study by Jessica Dolle of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) are linking contraception with increased incidences of some forms of cancer.
The transcript of the PBS documentary indicates physicians recognized this possible connection from the beginning, but, from the start, this information has been suppressed. Why?...
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