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Contraceptives are Dangerous to your Health
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There are a few Filipino executives who would like to emulate Thai Senator Mechai Veravaidya, known in Thailand as the “Condom King.” They would like to go around squatter areas and other economically depressed districts to distribute free condoms in order to cut down on population growth and to combat HIV and AIDS.
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I wish these misguided leaders would study closely the tragic case of Thailand. Today, more than 570,000 Thais are infected with HIV and AIDS and more than 400,000 have died of it, making AIDS the leading cause of death among young adults. To combat this epidemic, Mechai Veravaidya—the incorrigible condom pusher—wants to renew the campaign he started in the 1980s which made condoms readily available to the Thai youth.
Today, he has the cheek to complain that there is a growing appetite for casual sex among Thai teenagers, who according to recent surveys, are starting to have sex at an earlier age. His solution is to provide these sex-hungry youth with condoms so that they do not contract or transmit the HIV infections. Little does he realize that the very reason that teenagers are having sex at an earlier age is the fostering of a sexually permissive climate by people like him who have been promoting the widespread dispersal of contraceptives. Make contraceptives freely available and you get a copulation explosion! The sexual culture becomes one of “copulation on demand,” not very different from the behavior of dogs and bitches.
The objection to condoms is not a “Catholic” prejudice. Recently, Reuters reported that plans to install 500 condom vending machines in Chennai, the capital of one of India’s worst HIV/AIDS-affected states, has angered Muslim groups, who object to the plan for its degrading women and corrupting the youth.
The Muslim leaders have a lot more common sense than the Thai senator. “We must fight AIDS, but these machines at public places will only promote sex outside marriage among the younger generation,” said M.H. Jawahirullah, who heads Tamil Nadu’s largest Muslim group, the Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (Muslim Progressive Party).
“In its AIDS campaign, the government could end up promoting illicit sex, which will lead to a permissive culture that could boomerang on the anti-AIDS effort itself.”
The party “wants these machines to go”, he said.
The women’s wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind planned to demonstrate in Chennai, the Tamil Nadu capital, against the machines.
“This condom culture being propagated by the government can do nothing towards battling AIDS. On the other hand, it is bound to further denigrate the status of women and ruin the younger generation,” convenor Fatheema Jalal told Reuters.
Condoms are not the only contraceptives that are dangerous to the health of the users. Other contraceptives aren’t always safe as some publicity campaigns for sex education would indicate. A recent stream of reports has warned of health risks associated with some types of contraceptives.
The latest came last week, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that the Ortho Eve birth-control patch exposes users to more hormones than previously disclosed, the Associated Press reported November 11. The higher level of hormones brings an increased risk of blood clots and other serious side effects.
Previously, both regulators and the manufacturer of the patch, Ortho-McNeil, had maintained that the product had risks similar to those of the contraceptive pill, the news report said. But after the FDA announcement, the patches must now carry a strongly worded warning label, notifying users that they will be exposed to about 60% more estrogen than those using typical birth-control pills.
The Associated Press has published a number of reports on problems caused by the patch. Using federal death and injury reports, it found that about a dozen women, most in their late teens and early 20s, died in 2004 from blood believed to be related to the birth-control patch. Dozens more survived strokes and other clot-related problems.
On July 26 the news agency reported that Ortho-McNeil has spent millions of dollars advertising the patch. Promotion methods also included selling the patch directly to consumers. The ad campaign won awards for the company from industry groups in the United States and Europe.
As a result of the publicity, in less than three years, more than 5 million women in the United States tried the patch. American sales of Ortho Evra in 2004 were estimated at $400 million, or 15% of the U.S. market.
Oral contraceptives also have their risks. On July 29 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released a monograph publishing findings showing that combined estrogen-progesterone oral contraceptives are carcinogenic to humans. The conclusion was formed after a thorough review of the published scientific evidence.
Oral contraceptives are also associated with a risk of cervical cancer, a risk that increases with duration of their use. The researchers further found that the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma—a cancer that arises from hepatocytes, the major cell type of the liver—rises for long-term users of combined oral contraceptives in populations with low incidence of hepatitis B infection and chronic liver disease. The latter are two major causes of human liver cancer.
Gian Luigi Gigli, president of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, issued a press release August 3 commenting on the IARC study. He noted that its results shed new light on the prophetical value of Pope Paul VI’s “Humanae Vitae” and Pope John Paul II’s “Evangelium Vitae.” Gigli argued that the IARC study should encourage Catholic doctors to promote the methods of natural family planning.
We have to admire the wisdom and courage of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo when she officially announced that the only acceptable method that the Government will promote in helping couples to exercise responsible parenthood is the natural family planning approach. She has learned from the sad experiences of Thailand and other countries that have damaged the health of the population by promoting artificial contraceptives that carried with them harmful side effects. For comments, my email is
bvillegas@uap.edu.ph
BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS
The Manila Bulletin: Business & Society
January 20, 2006
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