No, The Pill Won’t ‘Give’ You Crohn’s Disease
Have you seen the media reports about a new study that suggests women who use the contraceptive pill may be more likely to develop Crohn’s disease? The headlines are pretty alarming, but if you read a little further there’s something these headlines are leaving out, and it’s really important.
Crohn’s disease is a condition that affects the human gut and causes the digestive system’s inner lining to become inflamed. ... Crohn’s is a chronic and lifelong condition, and while there are steps that can be taken to ease symptoms with changes to a person’s diet and sometimes the use of medications, there is no cure.
The latest research, which was conducted by Dr. Hamed Khallil of Harvard University and is published in the British Medical Journal, attempts to look in more detail at whether the results of smaller studies appearing to show a connection between use of the contraceptive pill and developing inflammatory bowel disease can be reproduced when looking at larger population samples. Specifically, the researchers were looking for an increased likelihood of Crohn’s disease and a condition known as ulcerative colitis. An important note right out of the gate is that the study did not look at the morning after pill but instead focused on the combined oral contraceptive pill.
The research looked at the health data of 230,000 U.S. women who were enrolled in the national Nurses Health Studies I and II, which collectively span a period of 1976 to 2008. What Dr. Khallil and his team found was that there does appear to be a significant connection with contraceptive use and an increased likelihood of developing Crohn’s disease. In fact, the risk increases three-fold above normal, but only under two conditions: the person must have been using the contraceptive pill for five years or more, and secondly the person must have a strong genetic predisposition toward developing Crohn’s disease in the first place.
What has been infuriating about reports on this story, particularly reports published by anti-women’s reproductive health websites, is that they have tended to focus on the increased risk while, if they mention the genetic factor at all, burying the other details quite a way down in the article–and in LifeSite New’s case, using this as an opportunity to decry the so called evils of hormonal contraceptives and exaggerate their potential side-effects. This is despite the fact that Dr. Khalil has gone to pains to be expressly clear about what the study did and did not find:
(emphasis added)
“What’s very clear is that Crohn’s is not caused by oral contraceptive use by itself,” Khallil is quoted as saying by the Mail on Sunday newspaper. “It’s a combination of oral contraceptive use among individuals with a strong genetic predisposition to Crohn’s.”
More
http://www.care2.com/causes/no-the-pill-wont-give-you-crohns-disease.html
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Damn theocrats will seize the tiniest inkling of a connection between reproductive choice and some percieved negative. If they choose to ignore reality, that's their problem. Unfortunately, they have a strong desire to make it everyone's problem.
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