{"id":674,"date":"2012-08-22T19:15:14","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T02:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/?p=674"},"modified":"2012-08-22T19:17:47","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T02:17:47","slug":"polluted-political-pregnant-or-profitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/?p=674","title":{"rendered":"Polluted, Political, Pregnant or Profitable"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Male Chastity Belt, US Patent No.995600 by Jonas E. Heyser, 1911. \u00a0Ideal for preventing platform self-abuse and hypocritical behavior in the more risque quarters of Miami during the upcoming Republican Convention<\/strong><\/p>\n

Occasionally scientific fact, polemical positions and public policy collide where none of the principal parties look good.\u00a0Recall the lack of self-awareness of Jonathan Swift\u2019s Lilliputians and the strife between the \u2018Big Enders’ and ‘Little Enders’ in Gulliver’s Travels<\/a>. Consider, in context, the grave problem\u00a0caused by endocrine disruptors from birth-control\u00a0pharmaceuticals that pass through the female body, down the toilet and eventually into the aquatic environment, causing male fish\u2014as documented in the scientific literature – to start growing eggs in their testes. Canadian experiments<\/a> show that levels as low as five parts per trillion can cause species collapse.\u00a0This creates a clear policy decision that should involve a rational social debate between those groups with a stake in pollution, pregnancy, politics and profit.\u00a0Fat chance.<\/p>\n

The Politicians:<\/strong>\u00a0 Apparently, irony has become illegal in the U.S., pre-empted by Todd Akin, Paul Ryan and other R\u2019s.\u00a0The Republican platform’s abortion plank, which includes\u00a0the potential elimination of hormonal birth control, is based on spurious medical \u2018science\u2019 and a doctrine dating from the 13th<\/sup> century legal text Fleta,<\/em> as referenced by Vanessa Heggie in the Guardian<\/a>. The position of Ryan, Akins et. al.<\/em> brings to mind, with only slight modification, the lines from a rock and roll classic:\u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t know much about history, don\u2019t know much biology, don\u2019t\u00a0know much about science books\u2026.Don\u2019t know much about economies\u2026\u201d etc.\u00a0 \u201cWhat a Wonderful World This Would Be.\u201d\u00a0Given Congress’ approval ratings, sinking self\u2013interestedly downwards in an ocean of post Citizen\u2019s United bribery, we can\u2019t expect solutions from them.<\/p>\n

The Right to Life crowd.<\/strong>\u00a0 Given the destruction of God-given fisheries and pregnancies (even in the case of rape) one might think that they would argue against hormonal birth control from the perspective of logic, fact and environmental damage. This path is not open to them, as it would involve using science and reasoning, leading to understanding reproductive biology, which might get them uncomfortably close to evolution. God knows what might happen if they started looking at sociology, anthropology and the patriarchal\/tribal society\u2019s desires to control women\u2019s reproductive rights.\u00a0They seem to be sure that things must have been so much better when, as recently as Victorian England, women didn\u2019t even control their own property, let alone their own bodies.<\/p>\n

The Environmentalists.<\/strong>\u00a0 The inability to protect the environment from endocrine disruptors mirrors the ineffectiveness of much of the environmental community, reflecting their widespread invocation of the precautionary principle<\/a> in trying to ban anything they don\u2019t like, rather than its intended purpose: to guide regulatory actions where credible scientific evidence of potential risk exists.\u00a0To grasp the environmental and economic impacts, check the recent Nature<\/em> article<\/a> by researchers Richard Owen and Susan Jobling. While the effects on fish (see above) in British rivers was first noted 30 years ago, only a decade or so after the widespread introduction of the birth control pill, virtually nothing has been done.\u00a0As the article points out: \u201cThe need to protect our environment from the harmful effects of EE2 is clear, but understanding our willingness as a society to pay for that protection is not. Nor is it obvious where responsibilities lie including whether pharmaceutical companies have a moral duty of care for all their products, which could be better designed so that they are safe for the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Profits and Pharma<\/strong>:\u00a0 Birth control is big-pharma fantasy made real, estimated\u00a0to reach $17.2 billion annual revenues worldwide by 2015<\/a>, used by 98% of the U.S. female population at some time in their lives, much of which involves taking a pill nearly every day.\u00a0However, things change when one looks more closely.\u00a0Checking on the Center for Disease Control website<\/a>, amongst non-hormonal methods, the copper T intra-uterine device (IUD), which lasts up to 10 years and is 99% effective, eliminates the problem of birth-control hormones released to the natural environment.\u00a0Dr. Jeffrey F. Peipert of the Contraceptive Choice Project <\/a>(check out the videos) at Washington University of St. Louis shows that IUD users have far fewer unwanted pregnancies, no hormonal balance\/estrogen problems and are far more likely to continue the method.\u00a0The problem? Initial costs are much higher, though over-all cost over time is significantly less.\u00a0IUDs are often not covered by insurance and, of course, big pharma doesn\u2019t get to sell a pill a day to millions of women.<\/p>\n

We only need the Right to Life crowd<\/strong> to say “while we don\u2019t approve of hormonal methods on ethical grounds, we respect your right to control your own body,\u00a0if you don\u2019t screw up the environment.” (Plus, as the Contraceptive Choice Project shows, when women have control of their own bodies, it reduces abortion rates and teen pregnancy dramatically.)\u00a0The environmentalists<\/strong> need to use the existing science effectively\u00a0by properly implementing the precautionary principle to protect the environment from endocrine disruptors.\u00a0And\u00a0our politicians <\/strong>should tell the\u00a0manufacturers of hormonal birth-control chemicals\u00a0that the continued release of EE2 endocrine disruptors\u00a0will be phased out rapidly, unless those manufacturers\u00a0will pay\u00a0to fix the problem, with the costs to be borne by them and their customers.<\/p>\n

Problem over, right? \u00a0Not with the Republican Party platform, to be in plain view at their upcoming convention. The Contraceptive Choice Project shows that we need more education and accessibility.\u00a0Maybe we can\u00a0let Akin and his fellow Republicans, and the others who have displayed their abysmal ignorance of human rights and the female reproductive system so publicly, sit in on the classes.<\/p>\n

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Male Chastity Belt, US Patent No.995600 by Jonas E. Heyser, 1911. \u00a0Ideal for preventing platform self-abuse and hypocritical behavior in the more risque quarters of Miami during the upcoming Republican Convention Occasionally scientific fact, polemical positions and public policy collide … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-financegovernment","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":688,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}