Tag Plan B

Plan B for 15-year-olds

Ed

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you need a prescription for the regular hormonal birth control pills, why doesn’t a higher dose of hormonal birth control pill–marketed as Plan B–need a prescription?

Recently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has lifted the restriction on girls younger than 17 requiring a prescription to purchase Plan B over the counter. You can read here my objections to Plan B.

Teresa A. Donovan, MPH, writing for Charlotte Lozier Institute, the education and research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, posted an interesting cli_logocommentary about the possible health risks from using Plan B. However, before listing some of the risks from taking a high dose of hormonal birth control, Donovan notes:

Various studies demonstrate that after a single act of intercourse, without contraception, 7.2 to 8 percent of women may be expected to become pregnant.  In contrast, pregnancy rates among women using “emergency contraception” (Yuzpe method, Plan B, Preven, etc.) are “reduced” to 1.9 percent.

In other words, out of 100 women who participate in  unprotected sex, 92 will not get pregnant. And if all 100 women used emergency contraception, 2 will still get pregnant. So, the push for Plan B to be sold over the counter and to be sold to minors is a great marketing scheme because 94 percent of the women who have unprotected sex and use emergency contraception will derive no benefit from the drug. It makes you wonder why a federal judge would want the FDA to approve the sale of a drug to all girls, regardless of age, which does not benefit them (click here to read article).

On top of that, no one talks about the potential health risks from ingesting high doses of synthetic hormones that target the women’s brain. Donovan writes about how harmful large doses of synthetic hormonal steroids (of which many types of emergency contraception are made) to the person ingesting it. She concludes by writing:

Plan B and other forms of “emergency contraception” are designed to thwart the normal functioning of the female endocrine and reproductive systems, beginning with – and, indeed, targeting — the brain.

Folks, wake up and smell the coffee, please. Emergency contraception is not women’s healthcare, on the contrary, it is likely to contributes to more health problems in the women who use it. It’s bad enough that it is now available to 15-year-olds with no medical supervision what-so-ever, but some people want girls of any age to have access to these potentially harmful drugs with no medical supervision.

You can read the entire blog post by clicking here.

Over-the-counter Plan B for 17-year-olds

Ed 2 Comments

Earlier this month, I told you about the court ruling forcing the FDA to allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B to minors. It has now been reported that the FDA will not challenge the court’s ruling. I guess what’s really telling appears in this Washington Post article: the FDA has “approved sales to 17-year-olds at the manufacturer’s request.”

Maybe it’s just me, but…I thought the whole purpose of a regulatory agency is to act as a “check and balance” to the industry that it regulates. Why is the FDA approving anything at the request of the manufacturer?  Is the FDA supposed to be safeguarding the public or helping the pharmaceutical company make money?  The question that I have which the FDA still has not answered is this: if a high dose of hormonal birth control is safe for self-diagnosing and self-medication, why is a prescription still required for the regular dose of hormonal birth control? In fact, why do low-dose hormonal birth control, such as Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, need a prescription, yet a HIGH DOSE of hormonal birth control is now going to be available to minor children without a prescription?

It still doesn’t make sense to me…unless you frame it all in the context of a hidden agenda.

This Just Doesn’t Make Sense

Ed

I have really bad pollen allergies. I also have severe allergic reactions to cats.  Getting married to a woman who had two cats and moving to Virginia (where my nose constantly runs because of the pollen) was a bad combination.  So, I’ve been taking Claritin-D every day since 2007.

One of the main ingredients of Claritin-D is pseudoephedrine and because pseudoephedrine is the main component in the illicit production of methamphetamine, I have to produce identification when purchasing my Claritin-D. Now if you have allergies like I do, then you know the drill: go to Wal-Mart, stand in line at the pharmacy, take out your driver’s license, and let them scan it. Now there’s a record of what I bought and how much I bought.  Presumably, if I tried to go to another Wal-Mart immediately, the computer will scan my ID and inform me that I just bought all the Claritin-D that I need for now at another store and Wal-Mart won’t allow me to purchase more drugs.

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