Posted by
JCE
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Apparently someone at the Vatican discovered how to use Google over the holidays and unearthed an old study on contraceptives in public water sources, took it for a bit of a spin and promptly belched out this bit of 'news':
Contraceptive Pill is Polluting EnvironmentThe problems with this are many but the thing that bothers me the most is the silence from the science community. The science community stands to benefit the most by encouraging skepticism in the face of such stories and had I not already heard about this study, I would have been curious to know if there is any truth to it. I do not want or need diabetic/heart medicine/cholesterol medicine in my daily diet not to mention the byproducts of ranched animals. The information cited by the Vatican is spun specifically to create fear and panic in the general populous and demonize anyone taking birth control medicine simply because the Catholic Church believes it is wrong.
But I have seen nothing from the science community that outlines in simple terms just how untrue and biased such stories are. They do not need to point fingers specifically at the Vatican to prove this; simply provide the information in practical, understandable, relevant format.
Here are a few facts:
- A multitude of drugs find their way into public water sources
- Pesticides are among biggest contributor to water pollution
- The parts per million of estrogen found in water sources is so negligable as to be non-existant. Additional research is needed, but the fact that a few fish showed up with both male and female body parts does not equal a total panic regarding birth control pills.
- Contraceptives are not the only system for delivering hormones to the body - both female and male - but they are all excreted so it is ridiculous to point the blame toward contraceptives
- Assuming all other things are equal, given the advances in science regarding birth control pills, the amount of hormones excreted today would be significantly less than when the pill was first introduced.
- If the Vatican were truly concerned about this situation, they would demand increased water filtration systems and fund the science to implement it instead of bemoaning contraceptives
The Grinning Planet
The Huffington Post
The Atheist Experience
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4 comments:
* A multitude of drugs find their way into public water sources
Absolutely true. Most drugs, because they have chemical structures never seen in nature before are not metabolized by the human body, but also are often not metabolized by the environment.
The fact that they are unmetabolized means that they can accumulate: the destruction d/dt is small while the creation d/dt is not and has been growing.
* Pesticides are among biggest contributor to water pollution
Agreed. But also in the same category are a large list of industrial chemicals as well, many of which are not required to be listed on retail ingredient lists or wholesale chemical assays.
But if the biosensitivity is high (which it is for hormones) or simple different, this means very little.
And, yes, we should worry about those pesticides as well. There have been accidents that spurred discovery that suggests we should be very wary of these and other industrial chemicals as well. The link between MPTP, Parkinson's and the very uncomfortably similar chemical structure between pesticide paraquat (and all the *quat pesticides) and the MPTP metabolite MPP+ is just an example.
The fact that another pesticide, Rotenone, has similar effects and yet is derived from a "natural" source (but industrially concentrated and broadly dispensed) only underscores how little we know yet ignore.
* The parts per million of estrogen found in water sources is so negligable (sp) as to be non-existant (sp). Additional research is needed, but the fact that a few fish showed up with both male and female body parts does not equal a total panic regarding birth control pills.
The concentrations are low, however, it's well established that the concentrations of the natural hormones that xenoestrogens mimic are also low naturally and biological systems have evolved to respond to very, very low levels with significant responses.
That demonstrated cases of adolescent boys having their puberty halted entirely and having female secondary sex development triggered by nothing more than topical application of a weak xenoestrogen in lavender oil is only the most dramatic example of how exquisitely sensitive the hormone systems really are.
"Nanograms per kilogram" if you need an order of magnitude concept of the amplification gain involved to result in detectable biological effect.
That's serum levels per body weight, btw.
* Contraceptives are not the only system for delivering hormones to the body - both female and male - but they are all excreted so it is ridiculous to point the blame toward contraceptives
Of course, not. There is also hormone replacement.
There are also phytoestrogens from sources like soy and flax. And the historical note: prior to the Meiji industrialization soy-based foods were always fermented in Japan, a process that destroyed both natural poisons in the soy bean and neutralized phytoestrogens.
So there is little history to justify the safety of massive soy consumption even in Asia.
But we also know there is a direct correlation to the number of menstral cycles a woman has had and her chances of breast and other cancers of organs known to be strongly associated with hormone interactions, and in fact known to have an estrogen receptor connection to cancers.
* Assuming all other things are equal, given the advances in science regarding birth control pills, the amount of hormones excreted today would be significantly less than when the pill was first introduced.
Yes, but no. Per person per use. Sure. And this is with women who already have a predominance of estrogen floating around in their bodies compared to men. But that's not what we're measuring or talking about is it?
First, even for women, the natural levels are a cyclical dose rather than a sustained exposure. And the continuous exposure due to contraceptives is precisely the concern and why dosages have been whittled down since the 1960s.
Contraceptives have less hormones than in 1962 but the population of woman taking oral contraceptives and the lifetime years over which they take them is radically higher. So the amount enter the environment must be increasing. Please do the math.
The total environmental load is trivially higher and monotonically increasing over time by even the most conservative estimates.
* If the Vatican were truly concerned about this situation, they would demand increased water filtration systems and fund the science to implement it instead of bemoaning contraceptives
A bit of Red Herring. I appreciate the the call for pareto-based decisions on risk. However we seldom seem to abide by it even though it tends to result in the best ethical results by utilitarian, equality, justice and other ethical measures.
If we did use Pareto ranking after 9-11 we wouldn't be in either war because we kill more than one 9-11-worth of American citizens every single month and have been for 30+ years. These road deaths are clearly acceptable loses.
Similarly more people are killed by the top 5 prescribed legal drugs than by every single illegal drug combined. Further, alcohol kills more than by every single illegal drug combined. Yet we have a "War on Drugs" that even the most trivial Pareto analysis shows is a massive waste of resources and massive cause of unnecessary death.
Since we certainly will not likely go back to try Prohibition again, this effectively set the "cost threshold" for risk and illegal drugs self-evidently fall well below that cost threshold. These drug and alcohol deaths are clearly acceptable losses.
In the case of the Vatican, if it followed the ethical calculus of its own Jesuit Order, it would fervently embrace the use of condoms to prevent AIDS through out the developing world as well. Certainly the ban on condoms creates more suffering and death than the hypothetical loss created by condoms. Apparently AIDS deaths are acceptable losses.
In all these cases, some types of death are clearly "more equal than others". With apologies to Orwell, but I suspect he would agree.
I find that double equivalence repugnant and utterly immoral by any standard I can imagine. But I also find ignoring evidence to make a point equally so.
So I have some of my own facts against to a list for consideration:
1. Biologists no significant math training in the one area that would allow any prediction of cascading effects environmental inputs impinging on metabolic networks, namely differential equations (DEs) with emphasis on feedback. This is of both linear and nonlinear DEs.
The only exposure most get is in chemistry relating to reaction rates, and in limited depth with predator-prey models.
This level of knowledge, however, in the context of predicting how xenohormones (or any other environmental toxin) might interact either a priori or a posteriori with metabolic systems is tantamount to trying to plan a mission to Jupiter when you don't even know orbital mechanics. Any answer you get is far more luck than science.
This can certainly be remedied but in terms of what anyone can say about risks right now as pronouncements about safety are 100% BS.
2. The understanding of metabolic networks is only recently becoming know in a canonical recorded or tabular sense. #1 prevents much meaningful analysis of this data but more importantly, only a small part has been characterized.
One hope is that because many metabolic networks have been found to be scale-free networks that the 80-20 rule will apply where 80% of activity will be confined to 20% of the network.
However, there is a reason for the remaining 80% to be around evolutionarily, namely it does something and as Taleb now famously said in The Black Swan about financial markets (which are also scale-free), this is an uncertainty you can't predict and is likely to create nasty "black swans" for you sooner or later.
I have to agree with you jce - this seems like just another attempt to vilify birth control usage.
I have to agree with Pariahjane. She's holding my cat hostage.
HJ
Perhaps the Vatican thinks they are homeopathic birth control.
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