More Bad News About Chemical Birth Control

From the Population Research Institute Blog:

According to the most recent report of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, published in 2009, close to 50% of all newly acquired Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-1 infections across the globe now occur in women of reproductive age. Only a decade before, in 1998, only roughly 36% of reported cases concerned women of all ages. Why this vast increase? Why, when treatment for HIV has become more accessible and the overall death toll has slowly been decreasing, are more and more women being infected? And why is the increase concentrated in women in their childbearing years?


Heterosexual intercourse is the point of transmission for the majority of these newly infected women. No surprise here. But sex is not just sex these days. Heavily funded population control programs have promoted, and even imposed, powerful, steroid-based contraceptive drugs on tens of millions of Third World women. What they trumpet as “greater global access to family planning methods” has in fact given the HIV virus greater access to women's bodies by altering women's local and systemic immunities, cervico-vaginal responses and protective vaginal flora—all in directions that make infection more likely.

Statistics gathered over the past 20 years reveal a parallel between an increase in contraceptive drug use and an increase in HIV-1 infections in women. Several epidemiological studies over the same period also seem to demonstrate a link. These studies were conducted with various cohorts of women from married mothers to single adolescents to “sex workers”, and were carried out, for the most part, among the populations of users of African family planning clinics. A link between the use of contraceptive drugs and HIV-1 disease acquisition and progression seemed evident, although most of the studies—for whatever reason—failed to draw any consistent or strong conclusions about this link. And none suggested that family planning programs ought to be modified or scaled back as a result. Read more here...