July 27th, 2011 by Elizabeth Kissling
Tap, tap.
Is this thing working? Is this thing on?
After some rest, reconnaissance, and re-organization, re:Cycling is back — bigger, bolder, and with more menstruation and women’s health news than ever. Most of our old team is back, along with a few new recruits and some exciting guest bloggers. There’ll be some new features here as well. More about all of that is coming soon. Our posting will be spotty and irregular throughout August, but expect to see a more consistent, regular flow after September 1. (Yeah, see what I did there? )
We’ve missed a lot of action in four months away. We can’t possibly summarize all of it, but here are some of my personal highlights:
July 19 – The Institute of Medicine (U.S.) just released a report on preventive health services for women, and the consensus is that health plans under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 should cover contraception without demanding co-payments. You can read and/or download the full report here.
July 18 – Remember Summer’s Eve marketing disaster last summer? They still don’t get it. This year’s “Hail to the V” campaign may be saluting vaginas, but it’s still telling everyone vaginas are dirty.
As Maya put it over at Feministing.com,
That chatty hand claims to be my vagina but is clearly an impostor, because my vagina would never refer to herself as a “vertical smile,” knows better than to even mention vajazzaling to me, and is too busy complaining about how long it’s been since she’s gotten laid to give a damn about if my cleansing wash is PH-balanced. My vagina is not a whiny little pussy.
If you’re not offended enough, check out the stereotypes in the Black and Latina vaginas. For a satisfying satirical response, check out Stephen Colbert’s July 25 program.
July 13 – Bloggers at Ms. magazine have done yeoman work drawing attention to the sexism in the latest PSA from the milk industry, criticizing the sexism toward both women and men in the Milk Board’s stereotype-rich “Everything I Do Is Wrong” campaign about PMS. Ms. has also promoted Change.org’s petition protesting the campaign. Update: By July 24, the campaign had been pulled in response to protests.
July 5 – As copyranter astutely notes, the use of a RED spot in the center of a maxi-pad to represent menstrual blood is an historic moment in advertising history. Are we finally done with the mysterious blue fluid? (By the way, copyranter is THE source for smart, snarky analysis of advertising; he oughta know — his day job is writing the stuff.)
June 20 – Corporate and subsidized donations of disposable menstrual pads may be good for girls, but not so good for the environment.
June 2 – British artist Tracey Emin art student at University of Wisconsin, follows in Judy Chicago’s inspirational footsteps and turns her tampons into art.
What else have we missed? Add your links in the comments, and don’t be shy about sending us suggestions!
Tags: advertising, anatomy, art, birth control pill, blood, FemCare advertising, Health Care, Menstruation, pads, PMS, vagina, vulva
Posted in Advertising, Art, Menstruation, Meta, PMS | 7 Comments »
January 27th, 2011 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Emily Swan, Marymount Manhattan College
With the military’s history of suppressing minority groups, its new effort to conceal and terminate menstruation comes as no surprise. Hopefully, the menses will be able to come out of the closet soon enough.
I recently wrote a paper about menstruation in the military and was excited to see this recent post at re:Cycling. Researchers have suddenly become sensitive to the “devastating” effects of menstruation on women in combat and training, citing a potential link to iron-deficiency, among other things. (Might I add that, while the article identifies menses as the culprit, the actual data suggest no correlation between the loss of menstrual blood and the low iron levels of the participants.) Researchers have also conducted studies and interviews to determine the level of difficulty menstruation adds to a variety of physical activities and expose reported difficulty in obtaining, storing, transporting, changing, and disposing of “sanitary products” (Note the hygiene-promoting terminology). These reports have indicated a significant struggle with menstrual management, giving grounds to the military’s new encouragement for women to use continuous oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) to “temporarily” induce amenorrhea.
What’s happening here is not simply a conquering of the menses but an overpowering of women as a whole. The article about iron deficiency says it best, with its opening paragraph explaining the biological disadvantages of women: women’s lower levels of physical strength, inferior aerobic performance, and a number of other physical and mental “shortcomings” that include the ability to menstruate. It states, “the physical differences between genders in the military setting should be minimized as much as possible” (866). They’re not trying to make women more comfortable by stopping their periods; they’re using men to set the physical and mental performance standard for which women must strive. The failure of women to meet this standard lies in their very biology; the study directly blamed their femaleness as the source of this imbalance. It’s not, “Stop menstruating because it will help you.” It’s, “Stop menstruating because it will get you that much closer to being a man.” Oh joy.
The misogyny embedded within this move toward menstrual suppression does not discount the results of the studies; menstrual management poses a serious issue for most military women! In addition to the difficulty reported in transporting, obtaining, and storing products, another article relayed the troubling results of interviews from women of the Air Force, Army, and Navy regarding personal hygiene and field menstrual management.4 These interviews told of highly unsanitary bathroom facilities in combat environments, lack of privacy for the use and changing of menstrual products, and bathrooms that rarely contained receptacles for disposing of the products. The women reported collecting used products in Ziploc bags to either bury them in the secrecy of night or to keep them in their luggage until they returned to the U.S. Because of the hot, moist climates inhabited during deployment; the heavy, reused, and unwashed clothing; and the frequent lack of water or time to wash up, the interviewees reported constant awareness and humiliation surrounding menstrual odor. Most of the women also admitted hesitancy toward utilizing the clinic for menstrual health issues because they were made to feel that their menstrual symptoms were not worthy of care. They also reported that gynecological exams were excluded from their general deployment health examinations. Continue reading...
Tags: birth control pill, feminine hygiene, guest post, iron deficiency, menstrual suppression, Menstruation, military service
Posted in anatomy, Menstruation, New Research, Pharmaceutical | Comments Off
January 19th, 2011 by Holly Grigg-Spall
In the LA Times earlier this month, under the banner ‘oddities, musings and news from the health world,’ came a rewritten press release masquerading as one of the above that stated ‘Birth control pills using 24-day regimen may be more effective.’ Firstly, just from the headline, it is clear that this is one of those tell-us-what-we-already-know stories that only serve to reveal the amount of money wasted on research that concludes the obvious. If a woman takes a pill more days a month than she does not, then she’s less likely to forget to take that pill. Plus the more pills you take, the more days of the year, the less likely your body will find an opportunity to ovulate. The article, and the study on which it is based, attempts to suggest that 24-day regimen pills are more effective for other reasons. Other reasons like those pills – or should we say pill, as there’s only one this is referring to, without actually being named as Yaz – contain drospirenone.
Bayer, the pharmaceutical company behind Yaz, has long implemented an aggressive marketing campaign in the promotion of its now number-one selling product. However, it has never before been able to claim that Yaz was more effective as birth control than any other pill on the market. This is one reason why the adverts emphasize other benefits – that Yaz is acne-clearing, reduces bloat. Originally Yaz was also suggested to improve a woman’s mood all-round, and reduce PMS-related anxiety and depression. The FDA had Bayer change that message, so that now Yaz can only be said to improve symptoms of PMDD, although the definition and existence of this syndrome is still in controversy. Birth control pills are hard to market when, until now, they could all only be said to be as effective at their primary objective – preventing pregnancy – as each other. There was no way to differentiate. It’s similar to the way bottled waters must strive to stand out from the crowd. Different pills do use different progestins, and these cause different side effects, and so women are often encouraged to swap from one to the next in avoidance of problems from breakthrough bleeding to depression. The synthetic oestrogen used is the same for all, but at different levels. A study that suggests Yaz is better at doing its actual job – aside from all the other suggested benefits, many of which have been overturned over time – is a boon for Bayer.
And an important boon, considering sales of Yaz have dropped since drospirenone was linked to the deaths and injuries of many young women, and has become the centre of hundreds of court cases against the company. Not to mention the web-based uproar over the negative impact Yaz has had on many women’s emotional and mental well-being.
That the study, or at least its promotion, leans heavily on the drospirenone as the cause of this effectiveness, and not just that the pill is taken for 24 days out of the 28 day cycle, and inactive pills are taken during the break thus producing more of a ritual and habit to pill-taking, than those brands that have a longer break, or no inactive pills, suggests that either this study was funded by Bayer – it was undertaken in Germany, and Bayer is a German company – or that Bayer is manipulating the study and paying off the researchers. That the statistics state that Yaz has a 2.1% failure rate after one year in comparison to a norm of 3.5%, and a 4.7% failure rate after four years in comparison to the 6.7% norm concretes that this difference is down to the method of pill-taking and not the drospirenone. After four years a woman is more likely to forget to take a pill here or there, the drospirenone level and impact remains the same and so cannot be the cause of the change in rate from one to four years. Only the method can be taken into account here. Continue reading...
Tags: 24-day regimen, Bayer, birth control pill, birth control pill study, drospirenone, effectiveness, yaz
Posted in Menstruation | 1 Comment »
November 24th, 2010 by Holly Grigg-Spall
15 Dangerous Drugs Big Pharma Shoves Down Our Throats
Alternet recently posted a list of the drugs most likely to make you sick. Writer Martha Rosenberg’s ’15 Dangerous Drugs Big Pharma Shoves Down Our Throats’ contained some startling choices.
Yaz is there, described as a “too good to be true” birth control pill that purported to do away with acne, bloating and PMS but ended up causing the deaths of many young women from blood clots and gall bladder disease. Interestingly, she points out that although the pharmaceutical company Bayer has seen a sales slump of late this has been attributed to the appearance of a generic, cheaper version of the pill, and not women’s suspicion of its side effects. This is a testament to the power of the company’s aggressive marketing campaign, and the pull of Yaz’s promise. I have written at length on my blog, Sweetening the Pill, about the impact Yaz had on my health – from the UTIs to the paranoia – but still when I saw Bayer would be releasing a rebranded version of the drug – Beyaz, with added vitamin B – I still felt tempted to try it. My life has been entirely transformed since ditching the Pill after ten years and looking back I can see very clearly how Yaz destroyed my body and mind, but I am still a woman living in a Pill-pushing culture just trying to avoid the self-doubt I’m sold on every day.
The birth control pill was the first drug created for and prescribed to healthy people. Its release was a catalyst for the industry, showing that although pills for sick people could make a profit, pills for healthy people could make millions. The Pill had a massive potential market of fertile women, and soon became a cure-all for any ailment seen as specific to them. This paved the way for another medicine on Alternet’s list – Lipitor – the heart-attack preventer drug, on which Martha Rosenberg writes:
“”My older patients literally do without food so that they can buy these medicines that make them sicker, feel bad, and do nothing to improve life,” says an ophthalmologist web poster from Tennessee. “There is no scientific basis for treating older folks with $300+/month meds that have serious side-effects and largely unknown multiple drug interactions.” What kinds of side effects? All statins can cause muscle breakdown but combining them with antibiotics, protease inhibitors drugs and anti-fungals increases your risks. In fact, Crestor is so highly linked to muscle breakdown it is double dissed: Public Citizen calls it a Do Not Use and the FDA’s David Graham named it one of the five most dangerous drugs before Congress.”
Lipitor is the best-selling drug in the world because its market is huge – healthy people holding any risk of heart attack, or just holding the fear of a heart attack are the demographic. Whereas the Pill is confined to female parameters, Lipitor also hooks men. Those behind the Pill had to first convince women that stopping ovulation is okay, then that menstruation is at best bothersome and unattractive, and at worst dangerous. Lipitor had a lost less work to do. Continue reading...
Tags: alternet, ambien, Beyaz, big pharma, birth control pill, lipitor, the Pill, yaz
Posted in Birth Control, Health Care, Menstruation, Pharmaceutical | 1 Comment »
November 17th, 2010 by Holly Grigg-Spall
Despite facing ever-rising numbers of lawsuits over their top-selling drug – birth control pill Yaz – the Bayer pharmaceutical company has released a rebranded version, with added vitamin B. Despite, or perhaps as a result of, the mounting claims for compensation made by those who believe Yaz, or more specifically the synthetic progesterone component of Yaz – drospirenone, caused their stroke, blood clot or heart attack or that of their now dead or disabled loved one, the company has seen fit to produce a modified alternative to improve on the risk of other, lesser known side effects.
Bayer suggests that Beyaz, with its added levomefolate calcium – a form of folic acid, which is a B vitamin – will alleviate the possibility of pregnancy complications and birth defects produced by the original Yaz pill. Yaz causes folate deficiency which creates problems if a woman falls pregnant whilst taking the drug, or soon after stopping. In the press release sent out by Bayer last week, the company stated that Beyaz would provide ‘folate supplementation’ – admitting in subtext that Yaz causes this deficiency and that the millions of women taking Yaz as the most popular birth control pill in the US and Europe have therefore experienced deficiency in a type of vitamin B seen as vital enough to necessitate the creation of a new drug.
Just as it seemed possible Yaz might be taken off the market, here is Yaz, new and improved. Except Beyaz still contains drospirenone, the claimed cause of not only serious physical side effects – but also a negative mental and emotional impact documented by women across the Internet.
Bayer is focusing on the effect of folate deficiency on pregnancy and the unborn. This choice suggests Bayer’s marketing department is aware that most women taking the Pill aren’t wanting to get pregnant, aren’t planning on getting pregnant soon and therefore will dismiss folate deficiency as nothing to worry over, yet. Although some women may be alarmed at their suggestion that you can get pregnant when on the Pill. A little research reveals folate supplementation has been linked in studies to a decrease in stroke and thrombosis risk – a subtext Bayer could not print without admitting blame and accepting the law suit claims.
The production of pharmaceuticals is a billion dollar industry and it is, unfortunately, necessary to assume moves are made for money and the market and not in the hope of improving the lives of women. The less sick, or deceased women, the less lawsuits, and the more money to be made for Bayer. The creation of Beyaz suggests Bayer cares, and has the interests of women at heart, but essentially it is a cynical ploy to win back the loyalty of the many women who have become suspicious of Yaz, and consequently the Pill as a whole, due on the controversies and, most importantly, their own experiences.
Bayer has created a product that will solve a problem caused by one of its products, and make money from this. Even more ludicrous than that, it is ‘solving’ a problem by making an addition to a Pill that is causing the problem, in the hope the negative impact on the body will be balanced out. Bayer could have told its customers that they need to take a folic acid supplement when using Yaz, or eat foods rich in folic acid, instead of creating Beyaz. Continue reading...
Tags: Bayer, Beyaz, birth control pill, folate deficiency, folic acid, the Pill, Vitamin B, vitamin b deficiency, Yasmin, yaz
Posted in Birth Control, Communication, Health Care, Law/Legal, Media, Menstruation | 4 Comments »
November 5th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
An Oklahoma City news program prepared this investigation about health risks of Bayer’s best-selling birth control pill, YAZ, with dramatic personal stories. The video cannot be embedded here, but you can watch it and read the news story here.
Previous commentary and reporting about YAZ at re:Cycling: The Next YAZ, What’s Up with YAZ?, and The Future of YAZ. For more about YAZ, see the reporting of our friend, Holly Grigg-Spall, at Sweetening the Pill.
Tags: advertising, big pharma, birth control pill, lawsuit, oral contraceptive pills, PMDD
Posted in Birth Control, Health Care, Law/Legal, Pharmaceutical | Comments Off
September 7th, 2010 by Laura Wershler
Laura Berman, Ph. D.
It’s great to see celebrity sexpert Laura Berman, Ph. D. – frequent Oprah TV guest, Oprah radio host, and (according to her website) world renowned sex and relationship expert - talk truth about the effect of the birth control pill on women’s libido.
In the September 2010 issue of Parenting magazine, Dr. Berman acknowledges that the pill can lower libido and clearly explains the mechanisms for this. So far so good. What bothers me is her advice to moms experiencing this problem.
Happily, there are solutions, short of becoming celibate. Here are four options— talk to your doctor to see if any of them might be right for you.
Her recommendations include two alternative forms of hormonal contraception – the Nuvaring and the Mirena IUD, the hormone-free IUD, and a sterilization method called Essure that scars the fallopian tubes to prevent sperm reaching egg.
Granted, all are legimate alternatives to the pill. But the message sent, yet again, is that women who don’t want to get pregnant or remain celebate must depend on drugs, foreign objects inserted into the uterus, or sterilization. If nothing else is mentioned, then nothing else must be trustworthy.
It has become all too typical for sexual healthcare providers to ignore the needs of women seeking information, support and services to use non-hormonal, non-invasive methods of birth control confidently and effectively. This was a golden opportunity for Dr. Berman to talk about the ever effective condom, the new FemCap cervical barrier, and the growing interest amongst American women in Fertility Awareness Methods, which though wildly misunderstood by most in the medical and sexual health community have proven effectiveness equal to the pill.
Kudos to Laura Berman for telling the truth about the pill and libido. Many sexual health care providers are not this open about the libido lowering effects of oral contraceptives. Check out the comments at this May 2010 discussion at Jezebel.com about the subject.
Now I urge Berman to take on the challenge of providing information and support for women who are ready to turn the page on hormonal and invasive birth control methods. For some women it will be the only way to achieve the better sex and intimacy at any age she promises on her website.
Tags: birth control pill, hormonal birth control, hormonal contraception, libido, oral contraceptives, Sex, sex drive
Posted in Birth Control, Health Care, magazines, Media | 1 Comment »
August 18th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Positron emission tomography image of a human brain
Does taking the Pill increase the size of your brain? According to this story in The Daily Mail, you betcha. And it makes women more talkative, too. That’s right – brain scans of 28 women PROVE it.
I know not to take too seriously such headlines in The Daily Mail (there’s a reason my British friends like to call it The Daily Fail), but if that story has you gnashing your teeth, consider this piece from The Guardian to be the antidote:
In fact, there are no major neurological differences between the sexes, says Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender, which will be published by Icon next month. There may be slight variations in the brains of women and men, added Fine, a researcher at Melbourne University, but the wiring is soft, not hard. “It is flexible, malleable and changeable,” she said.
In short, our intellects are not prisoners of our genders or our genes and those who claim otherwise are merely coating old-fashioned stereotypes with a veneer of scientific credibility. It is a case backed by Lise Eliot, an associate professor based at the Chicago Medical School. “All the mounting evidence indicates these ideas about hard-wired differences between male and female brains are wrong,” she told the Observer.
“Yes, there are basic behavioural differences between the sexes, but we should note that these differences increase with age because our children’s intellectual biases are being exaggerated and intensified by our gendered culture. Children don’t inherit intellectual differences. They learn them. They are a result of what we expect a boy or a girl to be.”
Now adding Delusions of Gender to my reading list; I’ve already read Lise Eliot’s Pink Brain, Blue Brain. (I also heard her present this work at a conference; it’s a very compelling presentation.)
Tags: birth control pill, brain, gender difference, neuroplasticity, sex difference
Posted in anatomy, New Research, Newspapers | 2 Comments »
August 2nd, 2010 by Giovanna Chesler
Red Moon: Menstruation, Culture and the Politics of Gender may have crossed your path as The Moon Inside You (its original title prior to 2010 its current distribution through Media Education Foundation). It is a film that has enjoyed wide release, with exhibition on French television and inclusion in an EU showcase of films that circulated last year. The broad exhibition strategy of Red Moon is fitting; it has a casual, heartfelt and humorous style that should appeal to many.
The purpose of Red Moon, as articulated by the filmmaker Diana Fabianova in voice over, is to answer this question: “At any given time, 25% of the female population is menstruating. Invisible. Discreet. Why is this normal, biological function taboo? There must be some deeper meaning.” There are problems with this statistical framing device – 25% is an over inflated number that eliminates girls and post-menopausal women as “females”. It also glosses over females that do not menstruate because of gender transformations and amenorrhea. Outside of this statistical malfunction, there are a few other facts provided through voice over which are not supported by specific research or attributed directly to any menstrual researchers. However, beyond these slights, Red Moon has great potential to make a taboo subject approachable.
As it begins with man-on-the-street interviews, the film seems to have interest in addressing men as equally as women. Through interviews with researchers who have written about menstruation in the 80’s and 90’s, the film attends to menstrual taboo historically and highlights menstrual suppression as an issue to address within patriarchy. There is a fantastically creepy interview with Elsimar Couthino, famous for inventing Depo Provera, Norplant and for writing Is Menstruation Obsolete (the book that launched millions of suppressed periods.) In his interview Couthino believes that women should have no more than one period in her lifetime and he likens menstruation to pending death: “First of all, menstruation is incompatible with life and nature, because an animal cannot survive bleeding longer than a few minutes in the forest. Blood, the smell of blood (he sniffs) attracts the predators. This one is bleeding. She is going to die.” Fabianova comically cuts to a hooting owl, waiting for your blood.
Fabianova is critical of pill-popping mentality and finds it better to challenge the negative view of menstruation, and silence around it, rather than do away with the period altogether. While she provides some examples of solutions to painful PMS (a belly dancing class delights, for example) the film does not directly address dysmenorrhea and severe menstrual challenges which have become justification for suppression in the first place. It does however, remind menstruators on hormonal birth control that the blood you see is a fake-period.
In fellow Re:Cycling blogger Chris Bobel’s recently released book New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation, she focuses on the type of menstrual activist stylings akin to Red Moon. In short, feminist spiritualism, according to Bobel, is a narrowly focused mode of menstrual positivism that essentializes the idea of womanhood through menstruation. The movement typically appeals to middle class white women and identifies menstrual change through the self. In feminist spiritualism, political action is limited to the individual menstruator or to the girls the menstruator is encouraged to educate. Red Moon treads in this territory throughout as interviewees speak to menstrual energy, the preciousness of menstruation, and the spiritualism in bleeding. The film ends with this logic as a nude woman walks through city streets, dropping red blobs that spring new trees to life through CGI effects. In voice over we hear about the filmmaker’s changed subject position: “I no longer fight with my hormonal clock, because it is she that reminds me once a month that I have a personal, intimate connection to nature and the universe.” It’s too bad the film narrows its final message to the individual, rather than reflecting on some of the broader work done throughout, like connecting negative menstrual associations to patriarchy, and demonstrating how certain menstrual practices harm the environment and our wallets. Overall, Red Moon is a conversation starter that requires additional reading to supplement its message. Continue reading...
Tags: birth control pill, blood, Communication, menstrual suppression, Menstruation
Posted in Film, Independent Film, Menstruation, Religion/Spirituality | 2 Comments »
July 22nd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
We’ve written previously about some of the apps for tracking menstruation and PMS, but this new iPhone/Pad app for tracking ovulation is problematic.
iOvulation is an application that calculates the time of ovulation and generates your personal fertility calendar. Simply enter the length of your menstrual cycle and the date of your last period, and iOvulation will calculate your fertile days.
The web site suggests it useful both for trying to conceive and for trying to prevent conception. However, I wouldn’t recommend the latter, as its algorithm appears to predict ovulation based on dates of menstruation: “The ovulation dates are calculated based on normal menstruation calculation logic for women having regular periods.”
In other words, it perpetuates what Toni Weschler, author of Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement and Reproductive Health and Cycle Savvy: The Smart Teen’s Guide to the Mysteries of Her Body, labeled the two biggest myths about menstruation in this interview with Scarleteen: (1) the idea that ovulation occurs on Day 14, and (2) A normal menstrual cycle is 28 days.
Also of interest is how squeamish the creators appear to be about sex and reproduction: the web site refers to “unprotected i*********e” and notes that the probability of conception is calculated “based on your ovulation time and other factors such as lifespan of the egg and s***m”. (For those of you unaccustomed to the practice of concealing obscenity with asterisks, that’s “intercourse” and “sperm”.)
As someone who studies and teaches sociolinguistics and writes about menstruation, I’ve seen a lot of euphemistic language over the years. But marking intercourse and sperm as unfit for print is a first.
Tags: birth control pill, calendar, contraception, fertility, internet, iPad, sociolinguistics, technology
Posted in Birth Control, Internet, Language, ovulation | 5 Comments »
July 2nd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Photo by Flickr user be_khe | CC 3.0
The Internet, especially the feminist blogosphere, is all abuzz this week with the promise of a new contraceptive pill for men within the next five years. But researchers always say a pill for men is just five years away, according to University of Washington medical professor John K. Amory.
The spark of new hope stems from an interview with Professor Haim Breitbart of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, published June 28 in London’s Telegraph. Breitbart promises a monthly pill, free of side effects, for men. The Telegraph says human trials are scheduled to begin next year.
How does this proposed pill work? The answer lies in a breakthrough paper Breitbart published four years ago, in which he and his colleagues announced a new discovery about how sperm cells create new proteins after ejaculation, while hanging around in the uterus before fertilization can take place. Breitbart believes that if this protein production process can be derailed, conception can be prevented without hormones. He calls his chemical concoction the Bright Pill (a twist on his name).
So far, the prototype works very well, inducing temporary sterility for one to three months at time, depending on dosage. In mice, that is. Breitbart believes there are no side effects, telling a reporter for an Israeli news service,
The mice behaved nicely. They ate and had sex; they were laughing, and everything, so all I can say is that we couldn’t see any behavioral side-effects–all their sex behavior was retained, which is a very important consideration for human men.
Well, then. If the mice were laughing and still having sex, then it must be all right. (Mice laugh? How can you tell?) I’m certainly willing to give Breitbart the benefit of the doubt on this one and believe that so far, the Bright Pill is very effective for male mice.
But we’re a long way from the jubilation seen in some corners of the Internet over this news. Not only does effectiveness in mice not guarantee effectiveness in humans, Breitbart and his research associate, Dr. Yael Gur, plan to continue rodent testing for at least another year before moving on to test the pill on primates. Then come three phases of clinical trials in humans, after lab and animal testing, to assure the drug’s safety and efficacy before developers can apply for U.S. approval (other countries have similar processes). Funding is needed for this lengthy process, and since there’s presently no drug company behind the project, Breitbart and Gur are seeking investors.
So even if a Pill for men is five years away, would men use it? Depending on the study and the country, anywhere between 14 percent and 71 percent of men say they would. What do you think, re:Cycling readers? If you’re male and heterosexual, would you take Brietbart’s “Bright Pill”? If you’re a woman who has sex with men, would you want your partner to take it?
Cross-posted at Ms. Magazine Blog
Tags: Birth Control, birth control pill, Men, oral contraceptive pills
Posted in Birth Control, Internet, Media, New Research | 4 Comments »
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
