Posted on 03/15/2017 5:12:46 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
The first and only internationally certified contraceptive app is now awaiting approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. If approved, Natural Cycles would provide Americans a government-approved drug-free and therefore side-effect-free alternative in a market saturated with hormonal and abortive birth control.
It all started when 32-year-old nuclear physicist Elina Berglund Scherwitzl, who was on the Nobel Prize-winning team that discovered the Higgs-Boson particle, “was looking for a hormone-free alternative contraception and we weren’t happy with what we found on the market,” said Dr. Raoul Scherwitzl, Berglund’s husband, in an e-mail interview. “Elina…decided to apply her mathematics expertise to develop an algorithm for herself.”
Berglund then tried out her fertility algorithm on female colleagues at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The Swedish physicist spent years modifying and perfecting the algorithm and a corresponding app, ultimately cofounding Natural Cycles with her husband.
“Once she got talking to friends and women online, it was quite apparent that there is a need for Natural Cycles, so we decided to develop an app,” Scherwitzl said. “We wanted every woman to be able to access Natural Cycles right on her phone.”
The pair hired a team of researchers and in February European regulators approved the app as a contraceptive device. Natural Cycles is not the only app available for tracking a woman’s ovulation cycle, but it is now the first internationally recognized method of non-hormonal contraception.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that more than 60 percent of U.S. women of reproductive age currently use a contraceptive method. More than 99 percent of women aged 15-44 who have ever been sexually active have used at least one method of contraception. The two most common forms of birth control since the 1980s have been the pill and sterilization, and the use of hormonal birth control is on the rise.
Long-term use of oral contraceptives has been linked to increased risk of liver and cervical cancer in some scientific studies according to the Mayo Clinic. They may increase blood pressure, and evidently increase risk for blood clots. They also reduce a woman’s ability to plan her family naturally and all chemical contraceptives, including intrauterine devices, can end a pregnancy in its earliest stages. Smart Tech, Pro-Woman
While Elina’s app and its underlying algorithm may be new, women have known about cycle-based methods of managing fertility for centuries. Today the approach is often called “natural family planning,” or NFP. Natural family planning may be more attractive to women with individualized tech-based support of an app that has demonstrated effectiveness, said Peter Pitts, president and co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest: “Technically, apps are considered devices, but the device itself does not physically prevent fertilization of an egg. It’s a natural family planning app.”
“Studies have proven [natural family planning] to be quite ineffective when it comes to typical use,” Scherwitzl noted. “This is because the term covers a variety of methods, they often require extensive knowledge and learning which makes them more prone to human error. The thing is, mobile technology is revolutionising the way we live today, and we believe that monitoring your body, getting to know yourself and applying that knowledge is something that will become the norm in the future.”
The gap between “typical use” and “perfect use” exists for most forms of birth control except long-term implants such as IUDs or hormonal patches. That’s because those require little upkeep or remembering, while perfect use of, say, the pill requires daily administration and ideally at the same time each day. The difficulty behind regulating an app is the possibility for error associated with an individual’s manual input of personal data, Pitts said: “The FDA would say that nothing is ever 100 percent.”
In typical use, a peer-reviewed study of 4,000 women found Natural Cycles was 93 percent effective at preventing pregnancy, meaning of 100 women using the app to prevent pregnancy, 7 got pregnant in a given year of use and 93 did not.
For comparison, the pill is 91 percent effective, injectable birth control is 94 percent effective, and IUDs are 99 percent effective at preventing pregnancy in typical use, according to the CDC. Another well-established non-hormonal NFP method called Creighton has been rated in a federal study as 98 percent effective at preventing pregnancy. Creighton’s governing organization doesn’t currently offer an app, although it has been developing one. Instead, to keep effectiveness high, users meet quarterly or biannually with their practitioner to maintain effective fertility management habits.
“The unique algorithm behind the app takes objective scientific parameters into account to make natural contraception as effective as possible,” Scherwitzl said. “It analyzes things like cycle irregularity, ovulation and past cycles to tell you exactly whether you need to use protection.”
Fertility awareness methods are highly individualized of necessity, because each woman’s body, circumstances, and cycles are different, Scherwitzl said. This is in keeping with the avant garde in the medical industry, which is moving into personalized medicine in a plethora of areas. In that vein, Natural Cycles aims to enhance a woman’s understanding of her broader health.
“Tracking your body’s indicators like temperature could also give you vital info about your health,” Scherwitzl said. “I think that people will become a lot more informed about what is going on in their bodies, so they can make informed choices in life.” What It Means to Empower Women
Empowering women to manage their bodies through smart technology should be a celebrated innovation, but given its typical opposition to non-hormonal birth control, it’s likely the abortion industry does not welcome these medical developments .
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropy, has spent millions of dollars funding abortion, contraception, and pro-abortion organizations both at home and abroad. It declined comment on the app’s potential effects on women around the world despite Melinda Gates’ very public advocacy for developing new and better contraception especially for women in the developing world, where mobile phone access is often surprisingly high. Right-leaning organizations seem more willing to embrace the idea.
“Information is power,” said Penny Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. “Women deserve the best science can offer for the health of their and their babies’ bodies.” True Access to Choice
If approved by the FDA, the app could bridge between insurance providers and organizations that oppose federally imposed birth control requirements, Pitts suggested.
If approved by the FDA, the app could bridge between insurance providers and organizations that oppose federally imposed birth control requirements, Pitts suggested.
“The people that argue that contraception shouldn’t be a mandatory insurance coverage probably would not feel as agitated by allowing coverage of an app,” Pitts said. “That’s not a legal answer, but it would certainly make for an interesting court case if an insurance company that refused to cover the pill did cover this app.”
Other government agencies, including those in the United Kingdom and United States, have not yet approved the app for contraceptive use, but women are not waiting. More than 150,000 users in 160 countries are already using Natural Cycles.
The app is broadly available on iPhones, iPads, Android devices or any device with a browser, but its approval as a scientifically backed birth control method was hard-won. The Swedish Medicinal Products Agency saddled the company with heavy investigatory restrictions in labeling its product as a contraceptive. It wasn’t until the German inspection and certification agency, Tuv Sud, approved the app that the company was able to reach the European market more broadly.
“At Natural Cycles we are all about broadening the choice for women. That way she can decide what works best for her,” Scherwitzl said. “We are disrupting the contraceptive market by putting the scientific knowledge behind women’s bodies back into their hands—and as our App Store reviews show, they’re absolutely loving it.”
The “rhythm method” is not the one that has a 98% claimed success rate. The NFP method which they are referring to as “Creighton” is a/k/a “the ovulation method” and that is the one that works so well. We can tell you that it is effective and understandable because that is what my wife and I learned and used starting in 1983.
Now it is not what one would call super-simple but neither is it inconvenient. But people are always making excuses about “that’s too hard”. So if anyone is interested in NFP they would be well-advised to get real instruction from someone who is certified.
Don’t trust some app from some outfit that doesn’t have pro-life bona fides.
Well, not to be indelicate, but it was recently revealed that a company who makes intimate devices that came with an app collected personally identifiable information on the people using the product.
“I don’t think the FDA is saying you can’t market it without their approval. But their approval would help, e.g. might pave the way for insurance to cover it.”
What?
I didn’t put a /s on my post. Didn’t think I needed it. Hopefully you forgot yours also.
I think it’s called the rhythm method.
No, you’re a couple decades behind. “Rhythm” was a predictive, calendar-only reckoning methid which was used from, like, the 1940’s until the 70’s or so. Then real-time (not predictive) ovulation-detecting methods were developed, like Creighton. Much more accurate, especially for women with irregular cycles, post-partum or lactating, and which required a lot less abstaining but, still, careful charting.
Other people developed systems of self- observation which could be used even by the illiterate: for instance I read that Mother Teresa’s sisters taught an ovulation detecting method to 100,000 illiterate women in India in the 1980’s (and are presumably still teaching it in the countries where they have missions.)
This digital app based on personalized algorithms kicks it way up yet another notch.
It just occurred to that you could call it the Algorithm Method. :o)
Data is good. With more accurate data, people can, in theory, better evaluate their options. Also, some accept information more readily if it comes from a smartphone than if it’s written with a pencil.
It’s not surprising that casual readers say “rhythm method” dismissively; they probably heard it as a joke in the 1960s regarding why some of “those people” had more than two children.
What is surprising, and very unfortunate, is how many medical practitioners are still utterly uninformed both about natural fertility awareness and about breastfeeding.
Avoid sex when your body wants it most??? Have the babies instead. They are God’s precious inheritance.
Sounds more reasonable than the horrid side effect riddled Pill. Never could take them.
What about allowing women to tie their tubes tied at a much earlier age, creating a permanent birth control method. They can be made reversible if the patient wants that. There are age restriction on tubligations now. https://community.babycenter.com/post/a27096155/age_restrictions_on_having_tubes_tied
Catholic hospitals won’t perform them. We ran into that issue with my mother after her second horrible miscarriage, her life was endanger if she got pregnant again. She nearly bleed to death on the second one as she was 5 months along, first just 2 months.
I had mine tied at 33 when I had my second C-Section. Never regretted it. Never had to worry about another baby. 4 were enough. This is not our grand parents age when 8 kids was the average to do farm work. No fuss, muss, pills, or kits to mess with.
We already have P sticks that tell you when you are fertile. This is just another step in that direction.
Sounds like a version of the Ovulation calculator. http://www.ovulation-calculator.com/ovulation-tests/fertility-monitors.htm
Just use other methods or protection on those days. If you don’t want more children get a tub-ligation. There should be no age restriction on one. It can be made reversible.
I agree with your pro- baby point of view. Which is probably the baby’s point of view as well. I’m just thinking of people who really, reasonably want to postpone pregnancy for a while, maybe for employment or medical or insurance reasons, or competing obligations like caring for declining parents in their final months or days, who knows?
If they know can postpone and then later have a baby again whenever they’re ready and able, that will greatly lessen their temptation to do something self-mutilating like sterilization.
God designed our bodies brilliantly, come to think of it. We just have to get brilliant to be good “ministers” of the sources of life.
Upon consideration of the evidence of other people’s experience over the long haul, I’d argue that it’s wrong to get yourself sterilized because it’s back to the old view of “Women are acceptable, but only if they’re doctored or functionally disabled or “fixed.””
If you “fix” a miscarriage risk by sabotaging your normal healthy fertility, you never bother with the medical root cause of what was causing those miscarriages to begin with. It tends to be, in practice (if not in intent) a way to dismiss the woman on the cheap, rather than spend the time to figure out where the actual malfunction was.
It’s kinds like the mechanic saying, “We don’t know what’s causing your car engine’s pinging, grating, grinding noises, so we just went with blocking the sound.”
Upon consideration of the evidence of other people’s experience over the long haul, I’d argue that it’s wrong to get yourself sterilized because it’s back to the old view of “Women are acceptable, but only if they’re doctored or functionally disabled or “fixed.””
If you “fix” a miscarriage risk by sabotaging your normal healthy fertility, you never bother with the medical root cause of what was causing those miscarriages to begin with. It tends to be, in practice (if not in intent) a way to dismiss the woman on the cheap, rather than spend the time to figure out where the actual malfunction was.
It’s kinds like the mechanic saying, “We don’t know what’s causing your car engine’s pinging, grating, grinding noises, so we just went with blocking the sound.”
Upon consideration of the evidence of other people’s experience over the long haul, I’d argue that it’s wrong to get yourself sterilized because it’s back to the old view of “Women are acceptable, but only if they’re doctored or functionally disabled or “fixed.””
If you “fix” a miscarriage risk by sabotaging your normal healthy fertility, you never bother with the medical root cause of what was causing those miscarriages to begin with. It tends to be, in practice (if not in intent) a way to dismiss the woman on the cheap, rather than spend the time to figure out where the actual malfunction was.
It’s kinds like the mechanic saying, “We don’t know what’s causing your car engine’s pinging, grating, grinding noises, so we just went with blocking the sound.”
Upon consideration of the evidence of other people’s experience over the long haul, I’d argue that it’s wrong to get yourself sterilized because it’s back to the old view of “Women are acceptable, but only if they’re doctored or functionally disabled or “fixed.””
If you “fix” a miscarriage risk by sabotaging your normal healthy fertility, you never bother with the medical root cause of what was causing those miscarriages to begin with. It tends to be, in practice (if not in intent) a way to dismiss the woman on the cheap, rather than spend the time to figure out where the actual malfunction was.
It’s kinds like the mechanic saying, “We don’t know what’s causing your car engine’s pinging, grating, grinding noises, so we just went with blocking the sound.”
Don’t know why that came out in triplicate. But it bears repeating!
Anyone who’s done NFP knows this is total bullstool. The body’s signals are not foolproof nearing and passing ovulation. There are THREE signs to watch for. One is the app-able easy sign of temperature. So that is the only sign they use! The other two involve more intimate and slightly more subjective calculations.
What a rip off. By marking only the most obvious safe days re basal body temperature, they have slapped newer tech onto ancient science. Like a sundial app.
Even done perfectly, you can still conceive on NFP. Unless you only want a few absolutely safe days a month in which to have sex, OR you just want a few days to leave your condoms in the drawer.
With that said, it is very good for girls and women to understand their cycles. It can also show some problems that they can work on early (such as too short cycles, too low progesterone to support pregnancy, and many other differences).
One thing I do like is that it is not being marketed to just Catholics. I don’t think it is healthy for women to be taking drugs for a significant part of their lives.
Most people who have tubal ligation end up with serious problems. At least 50%. They don’t always know where their problems come from. It is a BAD thing to do.
Vasectomies also cause problems but far less often.
Amen
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