Lloyd J. Duplantis, P.D.
President
Seitaro Matsunaga, Editor Editor: I'm one of a growing number of pharmacists in America who don't sell birth control pills for contraceptive purposes. I traveled in Japan recently telling why you shouldn't allow the pill there. The two ingredients of pills are estrogen and progestin. The estrogen is dangerous but regulates the cycle, the progestin makes women feel miserable, like during pregnancy. You hear a lot about the "mini pill" which is progestin only. Few in America use it. Without any estrogen content in the pill the cycle goes wacky right away. Women under 25 can't use it at all. Older women have disturbed menstrual flows. It's the window dressing of pill advertising, but not much used on the market. Because estrogen is dangerous, the manufacturers keep trying to reduce the dose. One result is more pregnancies: 3-6% per year, and more early abortions--probably one abortion per year for the average woman. Even with low estrogen content, the combined pill can strike like lightning and kill or maim young women. I know some victims personally. So by government order, all low dose pill boxes in America have a printed insert with a long list of warnings. Here is one sentence from an insert: "The use of oral contraceptives is associated with increased risks...of myocardial infarction, thromboembolism, stroke, hepatic neo-plasia, gall-bladder disease, and hypertension..."When I read about sudden death or paralysis of healthy young women, I immediately suspect the pill. So manufacturers keep trying to reduce the dangerous estrogen content to stop the very serious damage, but it is the progestin content which makes women feel miserable, irritable, depressed, volatile, nervous, nauseous - not interested in sex - practically as though they were pregnant all the time. That's the way the pill is supposed to work to be effective. We men understand, during nine months of pregnancy, that it will come to an end. We're going to have a baby, that's wonderful, then we will go on with life. But with the pill the "pregnancy" doesn't end. Progestin dries up vaginal secretions during intercourse, making relations unpleasant, the woman miserable, and making the man angry that she is not interested. The marital relationship suffers. Divorce rates soar. The children of these couples get nervous too. In America today, 10% of children need therapy because of hyper-activity and associated complexes. And don't dismiss an AIDS connection. These pills weaken the immune defenses against invasive viruses. Over half a million Americans now have the HIV/AIDS virus. Many indicators suggest that AIDS started in Haiti, the place where American pill manufacturers were experimenting with high dose pills back in the 1960's. In Haiti, under the influence of large experimental doses of steroidal sex hormones in a disease ridden and anemic population, the climate was ripe for virus mutation and the mutation began its development into the deadly form we now know as AIDS. If you sell pills in Japan, your school teenagers are going to get them. The boys will say "Use the pill," and the girls will lose their reason to say NO. Teenagers are not good pill users. They forget or skip and get pregnant. In 1991, 3 out of 10 teenage American girls had an abortion (31.4% of girls age 15-19). Take my advice, you're wise to keep the ban on the pill. Sincerely, |