You mean like this?
Posted on 07/18/2007 1:35:10 AM PDT by neverdem
IN May the Food and Drug Administration approved a new birth control pill, Lybrel. It is as effective at preventing pregnancy as the other pills already out there (about 98 percent) but boasts one advantage: Women who take it will never get their periods.
Lybrel is landing on pharmacy shelves this month. And now war has been declared on menstruation.
Already the first few volleys in this battle have been exchanged. Gird yourselves, women, for a barrage of advertising and research highlighting the debilitating effects of periods and the joys of menstrual suppression.
After all, periods and their mood swings are bad for family values (who wants to have a stay-at-home mom when she’s so darn cranky?), bad for women’s health (women were never meant to menstruate so much; natural selection designed their bodies for back-to-back pregnancies and breast-feeding), bad for the fashion industry (how can beige be the new black if women won’t wear it all month?) and bad for the economy (everybody knows women take to their beds at the merest whisper of “cramps,” fueling the nation’s employee-absentee rate). Western civilization, it seems, hinges on our ability to wrangle our messy cycles to the ground and stomp ’em out once and for all.
Sound absurd?
In a presentation by Lybrel’s maker, Wyeth, to investors and analysts last October, Dr. Ginger D. Constantine, the company’s therapeutic director for women’s health, laid the groundwork. Citing company-backed studies, she reported that menstruating women feel less effective at work and take more sick days. Not only that, but they don’t exercise and they wear dark clothes more often, she said.
Suddenly, news articles are weighing the pros and cons of our monthly cycles. And while it’s great that the American news media are, for a moment, challenging the culture of concealment that...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Male Bass in Potomac Producing Eggs
Good question, but I haven't heard much since that story, other than speculation about endocrine disruptors.
Thanks for the link.
In your world, life expectancy was less than 35 years.
I was skeptical when I heard about this a few years ago. But I was won over at a lecture by one of the researchers, a very pro-life, pro-family, pro-abstinence OB/Gyn.
“Nature” gives women 9 to 24 months “off” with pregnancy and breastfeeding. There seems to be less chance of ovarian cancer with fewer cycles in the life span. (Although I had a patient with 16 children who died at 56 years old of ovarian cancer.)
More than likely, there’s no endometrial build up and much less chance of breakthrough ovulation. (And so, much, much less chance for fertilization.)
The on/off cycling just allows the symptoms to come and go for women women with symptomatic endometriosis and fibrocystic breast changes. The neat thing about the long term suppression is no build up of the endometrium is great for women with endometriosis, and no monthly breast changes is great for fibrocystic breast syndrome.
Thanks for the feedback.
Best part will be all those lawsuits against the manufacturer when:
A) actual serious side effects emerge, or
B) various unrelated problems are imagined as actual serious side effects
Jus’ wonderin’ — why do women have *men*struation, but men have *her*nias?
Women have used birth control pills continuously for years to suppress their periods—this is just an easy way to do what they have done for years on their own for years.
Two pregnancies and five years of cumulative breastfeeding two boys suppressed my menstration for quite a few years—yea! I am all for fewer periods. Obviously I suppressed them naturally and now with birth control and I am very happy without the monthly “worry’. Lybrell is just a pre-packaged means to what many of us have done with the monthly packs for many years.
Yes, it was. Are you implying that having monthly menstrual periods is what led to an increase in life expectancy? If so, then how did it impact males?
Better nutrition, the mitigating influences of civilization, and ultimately the control of infectious diseases are what increased life expectancy, in my opinion. Causing women to have many menstrual flows did not.
My wife was prescibed Depo-provera for fibroids.
Of course, all trouble stopped. That was long ago, and to date there have been no adverse effects.
This just doesnt’ sound healthy.
You mean like this?
>>But I was won over at a lecture by one of the researchers, a very pro-life, pro-family, pro-abstinence OB/Gyn.<<
I would be doing a whole lot of research on my own before I agreed with a researcher, paid by the company.
Did you read this from the OB/Gyn above....
“I don’t believe that a pharmaceutical company is asking the deeper questions here beyond an immediate solution. “
Maybe it’s just me, but noting how many drugs have been pulled off the market because of poor research, I think I would be waiting on this one.
Yep. My sister is one gestation period + one month older than me.
I recall a nurse in one of the ob. practices mentioning how many women were pregnant already when they came for their 6 week post-partum checkup.
“hocndoc” brings up some good points, as have those who mentioned they take the regular dosage birth control pills continually, instead of having the week off.
The health risks from the replacement of the natural cycle with artificial hormones shouldn’t be appreciably greater with continual use than with episodic use.
And there are some benefits for those with certain conditions, which the individuals have to weigh against the risks.
Huh? I don't understand this correlation. I think it's a gratuitous slam at stay-at-home moms without any basis in fact. It could have read, "who wants to sit next to a career co-worker who is so darned cranky."
Yeah, at work you cannot flee to another room...
Brokeback Mountain will be moved to Dallas? That's not to make light of your question, which is, I suspect, very relevant.
All I know is I wish this would have been available while I was younger. The thought of no miserable periods sounds like Nirvana to me. Hope this pans out to be a trouble-free choice for women to make. For those that don’t want to take the risk, fine. For those that do, go for it. I would have, had it been available to me at the time I could have used it.
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