Contraceptive pill is polluting environment: Vatican newspaper

Yahoo! News (AFP) ^ | 1/3/2009 | n/a

[Pyro7480]

he contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said Saturday.

The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.

"We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating further.

"We are faced with a clear anti-environmental effect which demands more explanation on the part of the manufacturers," added Castellvi.

The article was promptly dismissed by several organisations.

"Once metabolised, the hormones contained in oral contraceptives no longer have any of the characteristic effects of feminine hormones," said Gianbenedetto Melis, vice-president of a contraceptive research association, quoted by the ANSA news agency.

The hormones contained in the pill such as oestrogen "are present everywhere... in plastic, in disinfectants, in meat that we eat," added Flavia Franconi, of the Society of Italian Pharmacology....

[DBrow]

"Concentrations of 17α-estradiol and the contraceptive 17α-ethinylestradiol were in most of these samples below the limit of detection." From my post above. NOT found in sewer plant discharges, limit of detection quite low.

[Alia]

1994, was when I first read of this via a science community. Makes sense. There is also statistical evidence that long-term takers of The Pill have a much harder time conceiving after stopping The Pill, than women who have not used The Pill.

Since the time when I was a girl, the Catholic Church has been encouraging organic means (e.g., "rythym method") to not getting pregnant. Always made perfectly good sense to me.

The U.S. West is predominantly Catholic. And it never ceased to amaze me how many far lefties scorned the Catholic Church.

[cmj328]

through female urine

And also through flushing pills down the drain.

[cmj328]

Since the time when I was a girl, the Catholic Church has been encouraging organic means (e.g., "rythym method") to not getting pregnant. Always made perfectly good sense to me.

And the "rhythm method" has been significantly refined. Natural Family Planning (NFP), followed correctly, now successfully prevents conception as well as barrier and chemical methods.

[NYer]

Google “progestin breast cancer.”

Bingo! The 'race for the cure' could be cut short if they removed progestin from the market. Think of the lives that could be saved if women stopped taking progestin; but that would shrink the profit margin for the pharmaceutical houses and grant foundations like Susan G. Komen.

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.
HUMANAE VITAE

Better to keep women on progestin to satisfy the feminists than ensure their well being. (/sarc)

[NYer]

Catholic Ping List
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

[Desdemona]

Fertility is not a disease.

[netmilsmom]

You and I talked about this in PM, remember?

[GladesGuru]

“I’d like to read some papers on just how much BC hormone is excreted in human female urine and what it’s environmental fate is, before I decide if this is a problem.”

The ‘problem is easily solved by passing another set of laws to reduce female urination. I hereby humbly suggest a new agency to make sure that all public facilities havemore stalls in male than female bathrooms.

Further, a tax shall be passed upon all females who urinate. Said tax shall be based upon estimated volume and frequency. The Obamasiah will appoint disabled, black lesbians to all positions created in the new Federal Agency which will be called Reduction In P*ssing Offenses (RIP OFF).

Such a tax could be adjusted by race, ethnicity, ad nauseam (no pun intended) to achieve whatever financial, political, and possibly even environmental goals defined in the words written in stone, on the tablets brought down from Mount Washington by the Obamasiah.

For the lurking Liberal and all to many recent public school graduates /s off.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"The only thing about the premise of this article is that factually, it takes over 2mg of estradiol - per day - to have any perceptible effect on a male human. 2mg is a LOT."

I'm very interested in this, and would like to see a link or documentation.

I'd also like to know whether it applies only to adult males humans, or to all males including embryos.

From what I've been reading, it's affecting fish and amphibians in many major North American watersheds. I'm talking about real freaky fish, males with eggs in their testicles and so forth. And there's more recent reports of analogous changes in other taxa.

The Pill as Pollutant, National Review

Male Fish Becoming Female, MSNBC

Fish devastated by sex-changing chemicals in municipal wastewater, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada)

Feminized to Extinction, ScienceNow, American Association for the Advancement of Science

And these are just a sampling out of thousands. Just for fun, google estrogen testicles male fertility.

[GonzoII]

Related: The Pill: What You Might Not Know

[steve8714]

So, we need a “cap and trade” on female urine?
Kidding aside, this shows too graphically that the Natural Law, the law of God, is not broken with impunity.

[steve8714]

I think the problem is the synthetics.

[Psycho_Bunny]

When I wrote that, I failed to properly restrict it to "adult" males. Adult males actually produce a small amount of estradiol. 2mg per day has little effect on males who are producing testosterone at a normal level. It's 4mg, coupled with a androgen inhibitor like spironolactone, where damage starts to be done. Spironolactone is the drug of last resort for males who have skin allergies to testosterone: hormone-based cystic acne.

The effect of synthetic female hormones on a male embryo is, from what I understand, far more dramatic. But I can't speak to that with any authority as I'm not a biologist. There seems to be general agreement that if synthetic female homones get in the womb at just the wrong time, it can distort the gender identity centers of the brain.

[littlehouse36]

"Concentrations of 17α-estradiol and the contraceptive 17α-ethinylestradiol were in most of these samples below the limit of detection." From my post above. NOT found in sewer plant discharges, limit of detection quite low.

 

The low-levels study you cite is from the Netherlands, 2000.

 

Another study showing levels are irrelevant (length of time exposed is the factor) is from England, 2002.

 

You apples, me oranges:

 

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1874176

In fish younger than 3 years of age, intersex was found to be a rare condition, thus indicating that the expression of this condition is progressive and appears at, or after, the onset of puberty in roach. Incidence and severity of the intersex condition were related more to the duration of exposure to effluent than to the year of hatching or to the prevailing environmental conditions in the study rivers (Environment Agency 2002a).

 

 

[Mrs. Don-o]

"There seems to be general agreement that if synthetic female homones get in the womb at just the wrong time, it can distort the gender identity centers of the brain."

That's what concerns me. Paradoxically, masculinity is a strong but fragile condition. On a lot of levels-- cultural, social, psychological, as well as hormonal, physiological --- masculinity is an attainment, not just an endowment or given. Consider the axioms, "Gender builds on nature" and "Culture builds on nature": if the "natural" substrate is weakened, there's a lot at risk. In fact, for human society, everything is at risk.

A significant subset of the opinion-leaders of our culture is so hostile both to masculinity and to fertility, many of them see the loss of both as a win-win. At least to the extent that they react to this as a joke or a dubious propaganda ploy by "the Vatican" and not as a real threat.

Masculinity is not replaceable by some kind of souped-up gender-flex femininity; and for the sake of my sons and everybody's sons, this kind of stuff alarms me.

[Alia]

Egads, thanks for posting the correct spelling of "rhythm". And the newer information surrounding the "rhythm" method. I was at a young age when the "original" feminist book "Our Body, Our Selves" came out. And it did not follow organic natural common-sense understandings for females; but rather the feminist politboro mentality. Rather unfortunate, IMHO, as it has perpetrated a third-person "room with a view" perspective for females as opposed a genuine understanding of a woman's body and its ability to procreate as something quite miraculous. And how truly unique each woman's body is.

I still cannot understanding how anyone could possibly think The Pill or EST, cookie cutter style, could apply to the individual woman. Each woman's body is so uniquely ... unique.

[Salvation]

Very interesting.

[sageb1]

Late to the discussion, but I think there is a distinct possibility that this is true. There have been other studies done on other types of meds being released into the environment. I was a caregiver for a friend who died. When the hospice nurse came, she took his meds and flushed them as required by law. None of this can be good.

[DBrow]

No, it does not say levels are irrelevant, in fact they are not mentioned in your clip.

Another clip from your link says “Direct-exposure studies with early life-stage roach (from fertilized egg and juveniles) confirm that effluents induce a number of feminizing effects, including vitellogenin induction and duct disruption, in a concentration-dependent manner. “

Time*concentration will be the critical factor, I think; if the observed effects don't follow the amount of exposure (time*concentration) then there may be threshold effects, or it's a proof of homeopathy or hormesis (which I doubt).

I need to do “real work” for a while, but I'll keep a back-burner pot going looking for data on synthetic estrogen concentrations (there are too many sources of natural hormones).