The FDA Approves Lybrel
You’ve seen the news, now get the facts…
Yesterday the Food and Drug Administration approved Lybrel, the first birth control pill designed to completely eliminate a woman’s monthly period. Along with Seasonale and Seasonique, pills that reduce periods to four times a year, this is an alternative for menstrual suppression that may be attractive to some women.
From a safety perspective, Lybrel and other pills that suppress menstruation are probably a reasonable option for most women. If you can take birth control pills safely, you can probably take these. But there are concerns about how these products will be marketed and presented to women. If manufacturers and health care providers leave out the downsides and overstate the benefits, as some have in the past, girls and women may be misled.
One of the most important downsides is likely to be the high rate of break-through bleeding – which can last as long as a regular period but which happens without the predictability of a monthly cycle. Half the women in the studies of Lybrel dropped out, many because of this inconvenience. Those who stayed in the trial found that it could take up to a year before this bleeding stopped. Another concern is that women won’t be able to use a missed period as a sign of possible pregnancy, so the FDA recommends that women taking Lybrel use pregnancy tests if they suspect they might have gotten pregnant.
Some doctors have said that it’s more natural, and even healthier, to suppress periods than to have monthly cycles. This is not supported by good evidence, and is a troubling message particularly for young teens and girls who are just beginning to learn about how their bodies work.
Women need truthful and complete information about menstrual suppression to be able to make good decisions about whether it is for them. This new option should not be undermined, by over-promising and over promotion or by stigmatizing menstruation. For an unbiased and accurate discussion of menstrual suppression and Lybrel see our updated fact sheet on Menstrual Suppression.
NWHN is a voice for women and a Network for change…all without the financial support of pharmaceutical companies, tobacco companies or medical device manufacturers.
The Next Big Drug Experiment on American Women
Wyeth, the giant pharmaceutical company that brought us the hormone replacement therapy (HRT) known as PremPro, which likely has killed and injured tens of thousands of women, has just launched Lybrel, another risky and unproven drug that is both a form of birth control and will stop women’s periods indefinitely. We already have drugs that are approved for stopping periods for a few months, so stopping periods indefinitely was the inevitable next step. The biggest reason women dropped out of the studies on the drug was breakthrough bleeding, and in many of the test subjects, it took up to a year to totally stop periods.
I know, I know, if you’re young and in a hurry, and especially if you have PMS, not having periods sounds like heaven. No muss, no fuss and contraception that requires no attention.
Here’s the bottom line: the long term consequences of not having periods has been poorly tested and we really do not know whether it’s safe. Remember, the synthetic hormones found in chemical birth control are the same or very similar to the HRT drugs that—after 30 years of poorly studied use—were found to cause breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and gallbladder disease.
A woman’s body cannot adequately produce its own hormones without menstrual periods, and the synthetic hormones found in chemical birth control are no substitute. Hormones affect every part of the body: the nervous system, bones, brain, skin, digestion, fertility and sex drive just for starters.
Women who choose to take chemical birth control drugs that stop their periods should clearly understand that they are guinea pigs, part of a giant experiment, and the long term consequences for them are unknown.
The bottom line for Big Pharma is profits. Big Pharma is a nickname for the giant pharmaceutical companies that, hand in hand with HMOs, control how medicine is practiced in the U.S. A recent article in the New York Times, After Sanctions, Doctors Get Drug Company Pay exposes how much money drug companies pay doctors to test their drugs on patients. Michael Moore’s upcoming documentary Sicko will reportedly entertain us and illuminate for us just how far-reaching and powerful these influences are.
Here’s a collection of articles I’ve written over the years about chemical contraception: What Every Woman Should Know about Birth Control.
