ENV290 Precis' 6 To Bleed or Not to Bleed

To Bleed or Not to Bleed
Malcolm Gladwell writes in The New Yorker, March 13, 2000, the history of the birth control pill and how hormones work in the reproductive cycle of women. John Rock was one of the inventors of the birth control pill which was approved by the F.D.A. in 1960 and created a sensation. Rock was a Catholic and believed using hormones naturally produced in women as part of their reproductive menstrual cycle, in the form of a birth control pill, should be approved of by the Pope. He thought it was ‘natural’ to manipulate a woman’s menstrual cycle with 21 days of Progesterone and 7 days of placebos. This 28 day cycle was created to be compatible with the church’s rhythm method of contraception.
In 1986-89 Beverly Strassmann traveled to Africa to study the reproductive cycles of women in a remote African village near Timbuktu. There were two menstrual huts where women went during menses. Strassmann kept track of the women who visited these huts for 736 consecutive nights. She found the Dogon women menstruate about a hundred times in their lifetime compared to our modern world/day four hundred. The Dogon start having babies young and breastfeeding suppresses ovulation for an average of twenty months. This seems to be a natural cycle. She and other evolutionary scientists believe the frequent monthly menstruation thought of as normal is not normal or biologically healthy for women.
Frequent cell division increases the risk of cancer. Every ovulation causes the need for ovarian cell repair and renewal just as the uterine lining needs rebuilding after the sloughing off of menses. The more menstrual cycles a woman has the greater her risk of cancer. Progestin’s effect of suppressing ovulation and countering surges of estrogen, which restrains cell division in the uterus are ways that the pill reduce the risk of uterine and ovarian cancer. On the other hand estrogen causes rapid breast cell division leading to breast cancer.
There’s a new drug called GnRHas that stops the ovaries from producing estrogen and progestin. It can be inhaled nasally, used daily, until stopped for four annual menses. Less estrogen in a woman’s system means less breast cell activity and less breast cancer risk.
It appears that if we were living the way nature intended, women would be having more babies, seventy five percent less menstruations, and much less risk of ovarian, uterine, or breast cancer. The Catholic Church’s stance on contraception is probably best for women’s health because adding more hormones to their systems seems to increase risk of cancer.