Posted on 01/03/2009 6:02:56 PM PST by Pyro7480
he contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said Saturday.
The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.
"We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating further.
"We are faced with a clear anti-environmental effect which demands more explanation on the part of the manufacturers," added Castellvi.
The article was promptly dismissed by several organisations.
"Once metabolised, the hormones contained in oral contraceptives no longer have any of the characteristic effects of feminine hormones," said Gianbenedetto Melis, vice-president of a contraceptive research association, quoted by the ANSA news agency.
The hormones contained in the pill such as oestrogen "are present everywhere... in plastic, in disinfectants, in meat that we eat," added Flavia Franconi, of the Society of Italian Pharmacology....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Quite true, and what she's not saying is that it's contributing to the problem.
Catholic ping!
this has got to be a joke right
Yes, and there are measurable levels of antidepressants and other prescription medications in the nations major rivers.
We have treatment plants in AZ.
pah-leze.
We get it, they don’t like birth control; just be honest about it because we don’t need the theatrics.
Yeah lets just ignore the science
It worked for Al Gore...
There was a group of scientists that came up with this study almost a year ago. Yes, it was posted on FR.
It encourages sex, and sex causes heavy breathing, which increases greenhouse gases.
and everyone of them great scholars i am sure
The premise has been known fact for years....it’s only the damage that’s been in dispute.
The real bugaboo in The Pill is progestin.
Google “progestin breast cancer.”
Hmmm...even without The Pill humans must dump tons of hormones into the environment. And add to that animals and their urine, and it adds up to a large number!
Then there are all the insects dumping pheromones into the air, and people emit pheromones too, as do most animals.
Plants use ethylene gas as a hormone and as communications.
Life really must mess up Earth!
I’d like to read some papers on just how much BC hormone is excreted in human female urine and what it’s environmental fate is, before I decide if this is a problem.
Any of you researchers find some backup data to refute or prove this claim?
Hey, don’t shoot the messengers. See post #9
Or post #16 for that matter.
True and not just birth control pills, but other drugs — all of which end up in our water and is affecting fish and other animals along with humans.
I think the original study was based on samples of fish taken from rivers, with defective sex organs, mating habits etc.
I’m not shooting the messengers at all, just jumping in.
Does this explain why the Republican party has become so timid?
lol if they drink tapwater and the dems all drink the same type of bottled water, you may be on to something.
And it’s as plausible as any theory requiring that fire not melt steel!
So anyone forwarding the theory of synthetic hormones affecting the environment are like 9/11 Truthers, eh?
Wow this must have man-hating environmental whackos in a dither. Save the environment...sterilize men...save the environment...sterilize men...save the environment...
Something like that. The only thing about the premise of this article is that factually, it takes over 2mg of estradiol - per day - to have any perceptible effect on a male human. 2mg is a LOT.
Please read my posts- I was responding to someone postulating that Republicans have become wussies because of female hormones in the water. THAT theory is as good as theories requiring that fire not melt steel, perhaps you missed the humor there.
This could indeed be serious, and if you scrool up more you’ll see that I asked FR research types to look for articles about persistence of hormones in human urine and their environmental plight, then posted an abstract with a link on just that topic.
A political article using “science facts” takes some work to sort out, but we do that well here.
The abstract I posted above mentions levels of 6 nanograms per liter. At that level it would take 166,000 liters to get a milligram, which is only 20 liters per day for a little over 8000 years.
If we are more sensitive, say at the microgram level, then the problem becomes more plausible.
We need more data.
Well, on second glance, lol. ;-)
What about at more vulnerable stages of human development, such as indicated in the link on post #16.
We need to see if all the dems drink the SAME bottled water, we could have fun with that fer shur!
That’s a very different story. Personally, I think it’s a serious problem but, I base my knowledge of the subject on what could be biased, or selective studies.
Not a joke. There is direct evidence in fish.
The epidemic of diabetes appears to be linked to the presence of Persistent Organic Pollutants—i.e., The Pill and some other pharmaceuticals.
I’m ready to join a class-action suit against the Pill makers, because of their reckless, negligent activity.
Not a joke.
There’s actually going to be a class-action lawsuit???
Don’t worry: If you like contraception, you can ignore science. If you load your body up with artificial hormones, it’s perfectly safe as long as your body knows you’re doing it for contraceptive purposes.
Not that I know of. I’m ready to join, though, if someone announces one.
It isn’t just water you drink. You absorb more pollutants through your skin when showering or bathing than you do from drinking water.
I’d like to see the stats on the incidence of various disorders, like diabetes, in places where the people are bathing in and drinking water that is certifiably free of hormones, POPs, etc.
This issue with contraceptives is that the hormones are synthetic. The synthetic version of oesterone is “ethinyl oestradiol” and has been found in male river fish to wreak havoc his (ahem) male-ness.
Likewise, the synthetic version of progesterone is called progestin and is a major player in breast cancer.
Since the time when I was a girl, the Catholic Church has been encouraging organic means (e.g., "rythym method") to not getting pregnant. Always made perfectly good sense to me.
The U.S. West is predominantly Catholic. And it never ceased to amaze me how many far lefties scorned the Catholic Church.
And also through flushing pills down the drain.
And the "rhythm method" has been significantly refined. Natural Family Planning (NFP), followed correctly, now successfully prevents conception as well as barrier and chemical methods.
Bingo! The 'race for the cure' could be cut short if they removed progestin from the market. Think of the lives that could be saved if women stopped taking progestin; but that would shrink the profit margin for the pharmaceutical houses and grant foundations like Susan G. Komen.
Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.
HUMANAE VITAE
Better to keep women on progestin to satisfy the feminists than ensure their well being. (/sarc)
Fertility is not a disease.
You and I talked about this in PM, remember?
“I’d like to read some papers on just how much BC hormone is excreted in human female urine and what it’s environmental fate is, before I decide if this is a problem.”
The ‘problem is easily solved by passing another set of laws to reduce female urination. I hereby humbly suggest a new agency to make sure that all public facilities havemore stalls in male than female bathrooms.
Further, a tax shall be passed upon all females who urinate. Said tax shall be based upon estimated volume and frequency. The Obamasiah will appoint disabled, black lesbians to all positions created in the new Federal Agency which will be called Reduction In P*ssing Offenses (RIP OFF).
Such a tax could be adjusted by race, ethnicity, ad nauseam (no pun intended) to achieve whatever financial, political, and possibly even environmental goals defined in the words written in stone, on the tablets brought down from Mount Washington by the Obamasiah.
For the lurking Liberal and all to many recent public school graduates /s off.
I'm very interested in this, and would like to see a link or documentation.
I'd also like to know whether it applies only to adult males humans, or to all males including embryos.
From what I've been reading, it's affecting fish and amphibians in many major North American watersheds. I'm talking about real freaky fish, males with eggs in their testicles and so forth. And there's more recent reports of analogous changes in other taxa.
The Pill as Pollutant, National Review
Male Fish Becoming Female, MSNBC
Feminized to Extinction, ScienceNow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
And these are just a sampling out of thousands. Just for fun, google estrogen testicles male fertility.
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