Skyla

Bees, Birth Control and Bayer

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Cool things happen in the world of social networking and hyper-connectivity – previously disparate movements become connected and cross-pollinated. My post: Look Beyond Access – Demand Safe Birth Control was picked up by an environmentalist, active in the #BoycottBayer movement. It seems Bayer has an extended history of unleashing dangerous chemicals on the world and other egregious business practices dating back to before World War I. If there ever was a chemical company to boycott, Bayer just might be the one – maybe even a little worse than Monsanto and that is a high standard of callousness.

Most recently, Bayer is the purveyor of the most dangerous birth control options on the market – the Yasmin line or oral contraceptives, the frequently dislodging and vaginal tearing Mirena (no one has measured the hormone side-effects yet) and the just released and repackaged version of Mirena – Skyla. Repeated billion dollar class action lawsuits are just the cost of doing business, I guess.   According to financial reporting, their profits are down because:

Bayer faces lawsuits in the United States from women claiming the contraceptive caused blood clots that led to serious health consequences. Otherwise the [financial] picture was brighter. – silly women.

Imagine my surprise when I learn that Bayer may also be responsible for the collapse of honey bee colonies worldwide – social networks are cool.

Lest you think honey bees are of no import to health, think again. Without honey bees we have no agriculture – no food. Killing the honey bees is serious business, something only the most unscrupulous and short-sighted corporation would do, but that is exactly what Bayer and its ally Syngenta (formed by the merger of Novartis Agribusiness and Zeneca (AstraZeneca) Agrochemicals) are doing. They are killing honeybees. Although, they disagree vehemently and their own, company sponsored research supports their benevolence, health organizations and governments worldwide are beginning to ban the use of these pesticides and genetically modified seeds.

Not so in the US. We seem to wait generations before making the appropriate moves (remember DES) or at least until the same chemical company can introduce a ‘treatment’ for what they caused initially. Gotta love me some unbridled capitalism without tether to ethics or morals – except some skewed sense of moral hazard.

It’s time. Life and health must come before profits. These chemical companies must be stopped. And since there is no regulatory agency with the teeth to protect our health, we must use the means we have – stop buying their products. Just stop.

Environmentalists save the honeybees, but save human women too. We all should be boycotting Bayer and any other company that dares to poison us for a buck. Spread the word.

 

Look Beyond Access – Demand Safe Birth Control

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Fair warning, this may get ugly. I’m mad. Bayer just announced the next in a long line of dangerous hormonal birth control options the Skyla IUD. Though not much different from the currently embattled and lawsuit ridden Mirena (which tends to dislodge and cause hemorrhage among other things) and likely not much safer than their oral contraceptives – the Yasmin line ($700 million in lawsuit settlements and counting) – women’s health and feminist groups are jumping on the support bandwagon. Now younger women can get a (dangerous) IUD too (Skyla happens to be just a hair smaller than Mirena), yippee.

Wake up, ladies. Medical devices and pharmaceuticals are not shiny new iPads. We cannot blindly support and recommend each and every new product in this market.

The fight to give women access to birth control as a point of equality is dead on and much needed, but ignoring the safety issues and not demanding safer birth control options is just downright negligent. Advertising these birth control options without understanding the serious dangers makes us pawns of pharmaceutical industry and complicit in the deaths and injuries of the women who use these devices and medications.

Women need birth control options. I support that – wholeheartedly. I am a child of the 80s-90s when access to oral contraceptives was unquestioned. Access to birth control allowed me to compete against guys in my chosen sport, allowed me to date, to pursue academic and career goals without worrying about pregnancy.  Easy access to oral contraceptives also, unbeknownst to me, elevated my blood pressure to dangerously high levels, caused progressively worse vertigo and syncope to the point of multiple hospitalizations, tests and desperation. I stopped taking oral contraceptives and all of the symptoms resolved. It wasn’t until years later that I understood the connection.

Like so many others, my physicians and I were blind to the legitimate dangers of hormonal birth control. Sure we’ve all read the package inserts (which are really the tip of the adverse event iceberg), but in a sort of cognitive dissonance we dismiss the side-effects as happening to someone else or as something to be tolerated in exchange for our freedom. Physicians often downplay the dangers hormonal birth control, even today, as more research comes to light.

Imagine, pregnancy versus possible death from cardiac arrest, stroke or a myriad of other adverse events; that is the choice we make daily when using hormonal birth control. We shouldn’t have to make that choice. As educated women and modern feminists we must be able to distinguish between fighting for the absolute right to have access to birth control from a stance that says all birth control options are good and safe. The later is most certainly not the case.

Not all contraceptives are created equal. Some really and truly, should not be on the market. Even among the safer birth control options, there are dangers. We should be fighting for more research, for better and safer birth control options and not promoting each new pill or device that comes on the market. Just because it’s new and the makers say it is safe does not make it so. The pharmaceutical industry has a long history of publishing only positive results for their products (here, here, here) and paying physicians to promote their products. If ever there were a buyer beware, it would be here – with birth control.

Finally, we should be boycotting companies like Bayer who continue to put women’s lives at risk. We boycotted Rush Limbaugh and the Koch brothers for their anti-women statements, why are we not as aggressive when it comes to companies that seriously injure women?  At the very least, we should not be promoting their latest, greatest assault on women’s health. Bayer is the maker of the Yasmin line of birth control, arguably the most dangerous line of oral contraceptives on the market. Bayer is also the maker of Mirena, the hormonal IUD with on-going class action lawsuits due to serious adverse events. Skyla is almost equivalent to Mirena and is simply repackaging and re-branding of that old, soon to be off-patent, dangerous IUD. It is neither new nor innovative and it remains to be seen whether it is any safer.  What are we doing ladies?

Post Script: Hormones MatterTM is taking the safety of birth control into its own hands. We find it unacceptable that the adverse events of many birth control options are poorly understood, that medication interactions are not investigated and that oral contraceptives (like many other medications in women’s health) are regularly prescribed for uses for which there are no data to support their efficacy. We are conducting our first of many studies on oral contraceptives and women’s health issues. If you have ever used oral contraceptives, whether you had any side-effects or not, please take the Oral Contraceptives Survey. Another woman’s life may depend upon it.

About us: We are an unfunded company, committed to improving women’s health through research. We believe so strongly in the need for better research that rather than wait for funding, we’re doing the research anyway.  We are crowdsourcing this research and would be much appreciative if you would also share the link throughout your social media networks.  To take another health survey, click: Take a Health Survey.

To suggest a survey, help create a survey, write a guest post or otherwise get involved: info@hormonesmatter.com

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.