The Law of Unintended Consequences: Pill Caused "Demographic Catastrophe"

One of the inventors of the birth control pill, Carl Djerassi, an Austrian chemist and one of the three originators of the original synthetic progesterone, Norethisterone, calls the impact of the pill on society as a "demographic catastrophe." The pills environmental impact is also a disaster. with tons of hormones polluting the environment and impairing male fertility. In the UK the Daily Mail headlined an article warning of a Fertility Timebomb Found in Drinking Water. Men may be glad to have women take the pill so they can always be available as free sex toys. How many would be happy to know that they may be paying the price of chemical castration for their fun?

Check out these articles:

Catholic Church renews its attack on contraceptive pill

Water Pollution Caused by Birth Control Poses Dilemma

Aspartame, the Pill, and Love of Money

I was reading an article this morning about the dangers of aspartame which has been linked to brain tumors. Here's an excerpt:

Dr. Adrian Gross, the FDA's toxicologist who examined the aspartame research initially presented to the FDA by G.D. Searle, was "absolutely shocked" at the evidence according to Dr. Russell Blaylock, a retired neurosurgeon, showing "an enormous increase in tumors, particularly brain tumors."

"And of course that's exactly what we're seeing now is this tremendous increase in brain tumors in this country. Which is completely unexplained by the neurological profession," continues Dr. Blaylock.

A View of the Brave New World from One of its Architects

A Terrifying Future for Female Fertility - by the man who created the pill

Three men are considered the "fathers" of the birth control pill. Gregory Pincus, research director of the Worcestire Foundation, Dr. Min-Chueh Chang, the foundation's senior scientist, and Dr. John Rock, an Ob-Gyn, who oversaw the first clinical trial. In this article, however, Dr. Carl Djerassi, claims his role as the pill's developer and obviously is proud of his part in it. This is the first I've read about him, but I'm sure research was going on in many places at the time. Serle had already developed a progesterone pill that was just sitting on the research shelf.

Pincus was the zealous man behind the research who teamed up with Margaret Sanger when the pharmaceutical firm backing his project pulled out. Sanger supported his work but, more importantly, brought in a rich sugar mommy as well, Katharine Dexter McCormick. As a research scientist Gregory Pincus had no human guinea pigs for his experiments so he encouraged a well-known Catholic Ob-Gyn, Dr. John Rock, to run the intial clinical trial of 50 women through his medical practice. Rock was known as a devout Catholic and daily communicant. Margaret Sanger who was fiercely anti-Catholic, nevertheless, was shrewd enough to realize the benefit of having a Catholic working to promote the pill. She reportedly said of him, "Being a good Roman Catholic and as handsome as a god...He can just get away with anything." And Rock became one of the pill's strongest devotees. He spent years trying to get the Church to approve it even writing a book, The Time has Come.

When Humanae Vitae came out, he stopped attending Mass. He died of a heart attack in 1984. I don't know whether Rock remained estranged from the Church or recognized the part the pill played in the sexual revolution and the moral decline of the culture. I pray for him and his confreres. Shortly after the pill was approved, Pincus died of a rare blood disease from exposure to toxic drugs in the lab, an ironically fitting end for someone who killed and injured so many women.

As for Carl Djerassi's whose article inspired this post, he sounds like a man in great need of prayer, although I wonder whether prayer can penetrate such a demeanor of pride and arrogance. But as the old adage says, "Where there's life, there's hope!"

For more on the history of the pill see:

The Pill by PBS

You Can't Fool Mother Nature: i.e., Pope Paul VI was right

Pope Paul VI was a prophet when he predicted the negative effects of artificial birth control. Particulary on target were his statements about the evil effects on the relationships between men and women:

Another thing to be dreaded is that men who have come to take contraceptive practices for granted, will lose all sense of reverence for women. With no heed for their physical or mental balance, they will make them mere instruments of their lust. No longer will women be looked up to by men as companions to whom they owe love and respect.

It isn't just relationships that have been poisoned, however. Women are paying the price for their "reproductive freedom" in their own bodies. Hormonal birth control is a woman's daily dose of poison. She may not die of it today, but the damage to her body is irrevocable and the increase in the likelihood she'll die of breast or other form of cancer is significant. Who really benefits from women "controlling their bodies?" Rapacious men who want the enjoyment of sex without any of the responsibility. They used to have to pay hookers to get it. Now they just "hook up."

The dangers to women from chemical birth control are well known and have been for years, but the unpopular truth has been suppressed. The government medical community aids and abets the silence and enables the exploitation of women, especially teens. Approving over the counter sale of the morning after bill, which contains a mega-dose of hormones, ensures that young women will suffer serious health consequences in the future. How many times will young girls, encouraged by their boyfriends, resort to the pill during their teen years? How many will die of breast cancer before they're 50?

Who cares after all? Women have always been seen as sex objects by immoral and irresponsible men. The playboy's greatest coup was convincing women that to be equal to men they needed to be equally irresponsible. But women are the ones who pay the biggest price for their so-called freedom.

Read Humanae Vitae and see all the prophecies that have come to pass since its release: loss of respect for women, more infidelity, government using birth control and abortion against their people, more divorce and breakdown of the marital bond. There are plenty of problems in the Catholic Church because, while it's an institution founded by Christ, he uses men and some of them are Judases. Nevertheless, the fullness of truth is in her doctrine whether anyone follows it or not.

Dangers of chemical birth control

Breast Cancer: the Pill's Deadly Legacy

I'm a breast cancer survivor. When I was 39 I found a lump during a self-exam. To make a long story short I had surgery (modified radical mastectomy) and chemotherapy. And here I am about twenty years later to tell the tale. Because I had absolutely no risk factors and was nursing a little one at the time, my doctor presumed it was a clogged milk duct and didn't order a mammogram. When it didn't go away and seemed to be getting larger I went for one. (Always question your doctor - better safe than sorry.)

At the time (1986) very little was known about breast cancer in pre-menopausal women; it was still relatively uncommon. The cancer hadn't spread to the lymph nodes and the surgeon thought I was free and clear. The oncologist recommended otherwise. I chose chemo, not because there were studies showing it was effective in younger women, but because he said, "You get one chance to hit cancer hard and your children are very young." Ten years later studies showed a longer survival rate for the surgery + chemo combo.

Over the years I've noticed cancer attack younger and younger women? Why? Why has breast cancer become not only a disease of middle-aged and older women, but is hitting women in their 30s, their 20s, and even teenagers. One answer is the birth control pill. A study by the Mayo Clinic found the pill is particularly dangerous for women who have never had a baby - a target group for organizations like Planned Parenthood.

One of my daughters has a friend whose mom put her on the pill when she was about fourteen. When she hit 25 she had a very aggressive cancer in both breasts. It's affected her decisions about having children. Could she leave her husband with little ones to raise alone?

Another risk factor is in the food we eat and the water we drink. Increasingly, fish are turning up in our rivers with confused sexual organs, male fish carrying eggs for example. While estrogen from the pill excreted in human waste is one factor, hormones fed to farm animals is another. Waste products and farm runoff pollute rivers, wells, and reservoirs. In my own county (Shenandoah in Virginia) the river is polluted with birth control drugs. And it's not just affecting women. Increasingly, little boys are born with undescended testicles and low sperm counts caused by a variety of chemical pollutants including birth control drugs.

But is there anyone out there raising the alarm? Darn few! The environmentalists who continually lobby Congress with scares that often prove baseless, apparently have little interest in demanding action over a danger that threatens us every time we turn on a faucet. But then it's more politically correct to penalize an oil company over a localized spill than to go after a behemoth like Planned Parenthood and their pharmaceutical allies who are polluting millions of women's bodies directly and many millions of others through what I'll euphemistically call the "yellow oil" spill.

Women need to hear the warning loud and clear. The pill may not kill you today or next week, but the breast cancer you get because of it may very well kill you in a few years. Even back in the 80s they knew there was a link. My doctor told me it was a good thing I never took the pill because I would probably have had cancer at 29 instead of 39.

One last note. There is a new, very aggressive kind of cancer called inflammatory breast cancer or IBC. Its symptoms are very different from traditional breast cancer. Watch this video warning. Knowledge is a woman's best protection against breast cancer.

Important Headlines for Catholics

Pill Inventor Slams...Pill

Fr. Neuhaus Dies at 72

Pope Benedict's 'State of the World' Address

Healthcare and Conscience

True love - or lust and contraception: It's your choice.

Since the 1960s we've been in a sexual revolution launched by a wide range of artificial hormones generically described as "the pill." In recent years the drugs have also been delivered via hormone-filled tubes inserted in a woman's upper arm (NORPLANT) or a patch worn underneath her clothing.

What most women don't know is how dangerous these drugs are, particularly the birth control patch which delivers about 60% more estrogen than the pill. Hundreds of women have developed deep vein thrombosis (blood clots) in the legs or pulmonary embolisms (blood clost in the lungs). At least twenty women have died. This is consistent with the experience of the early high-dosage pill which also caused death in women leading to the development of lower-dose alternatives.

Johnson and Johnson, maker of the Ortho Evra birth control patch has settled hundreds of cases to the tune of $68 million in payouts. Unfortunately, most of those have been out-of-court settlments with confidentiality invoked letting the company continue to pretend the drugs have minimal risk.

The world continues to ignore or ridicule Humanae Vitae as the facts upholding its warnings mount. No one who follows Church teaching against the use of contraception will ever suffer like the 25-year-old assistant Volleyball Coach at the University of Cincinnatti, Stefanie Rosenfeld. She died of a heart attack less than a month after starting the patch. And there are dozens of other young women like her, some only teenagers, victims of a culture that encourages uncommitted copulation rather than the true spiritual intimacy and conjugal love of marriage and child-bearing.

Women are the big losers because they bear the most damage from the sexual revolution: physical damage to their bodies, but equally devastating spiritual damage to their souls. Women are naturally inclined toward love and nurturing. A man can more easily separate his sex drive from his soul-center. But for women, it can be shattering. If she gives herself out of a mistaken notion of love, the betrayal is deep and long-lasting. Is that not, perhaps, one explanation for the growing number of lesbians among us?

We need a return to the beautiful virtue of chastity. It's a manly virtue that requires courageous self-control on the part of young men who need to guard their eyes from a continuous barrage of lustful images thrown at them by the culture. It is also a womanly virtue wrapped in modesty that guards and protects true love. Pray the young and remind them that:

True love waits. Pass it on.