birth control
kkrisberg | May 26, 2017To the surprise of literally no one, President Trump’s 2018 budget proposed stripping all federal funds, including Medicaid dollars, from Planned Parenthood. Proponents of this argue that if Planned Parenthood clinics end up shuttered, women can simply access care elsewhere. But growing research shows that’s the opposite of what actually happens.
We got even more evidence of this with a report on the capacity of federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) to fill the gaps left when a Planned Parenthood clinic is forced to close its doors. In a policy paper from the Guttmacher Institute…
kkrisberg | March 17, 2017There’s a lot at stake for women’s health in the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, which eliminated out-of-pocket costs for birth control and has been highly successful in breaking down barriers to affordable family planning. The cost-sharing changes alone are saving individual women hundreds of dollars each year on their choice of contraception.
So far, the Republican replacement proposal, known as the American Health Care Act, doesn’t impact the Obama-era contraception coverage provisions, nor does it touch other women’s health benefits, such as designating maternity care…
dr. dolittle | September 8, 2016 Image of a rat in the New York City subway By m01229 from USA, from Wikimedia commons
News out of Flagstaff, Arizona reports that a biotechnology company in the area, SenesTech, has developed a birth control for rats that was recently cleared by the Environmental Protection Agency. The new drug comes in the form of a sweetened liquid bait that has been shown to reduce rodent populations by as much as 40%. It works in female rats by inducing loss of eggs whereas in male rats it disrupts development of sperm.
The drug is also being tested in other feral animals such as dogs, cats, and mice.…
kkrisberg | July 10, 2015Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, American women are saving hundreds of dollars on birth control, according to the first study to document the impact of health reform on prescription contraception spending.
To conduct the study, which was published this month in Health Affairs, researchers analyzed claims data from a large national insurer between January 2008 and June 2013, eventually examining data linked to more than 790,800 women. They found that the average out-of-pocket expense decreased for nearly all prescription contraceptive methods on the market. In particular, the average out-of-…
oracknows | May 21, 2015Epigenetics.
As I've described before, to alternative medicine practitioners, epigenetics seems to mean something akin to what the word "quantum" means: Magic. I've covered, for example, the woo-filled stylings of Deepak Chopra invoking things like "quantum consciousness," and seemingly for quite a few years the best way to slap a patina of "sciencey"-sounding credibility on a pseudoscientific medical treatment has been to add the word "quantum" to it. Perhaps the epitome of this tendency was the infamous Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface promoted by a rather—shall we say?—flamboyant…
lborkowski | October 9, 2014Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a "Contraceptives for Adolescents" policy statement that advises pediatricians to consider long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) methods as first-line contraceptive choices for adolescents. LARC methods include contraceptive implants that can be inserted into the upper arm (which can remain in place for three years) and intrauterine devices (with different versions approved for three or five years).
Unlike condoms or birth-control pills, which require repeated correct use, LARCs only need to be administered once. They have failure…
lborkowski | July 21, 2011This post is part of the Birth Control Blog Carnival put on by the National Women's Law Center.
Yesterday I wrote about new Institute of Medicine recommendations regarding preventive health services for women that should be covered by all new health plans without requiring cost-sharing. One of the IOM's recommendations was that all FDA-approved contraceptive methods be available free of charge to women with reproductive capacity, and this was the one that attracted the most opposition. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 99% of women who've had sexual intercourse have used contraception.…
jhalper | January 25, 2011Two recent papers to come out of the Weizmann Institute have possible medical applications -- one in preventing pregnancy, the other in preventing the deadly effects of nerve gas.
The first might give pause to those among us who are "believers" in antioxidants. It seems that those "nasty" molecules they eliminate -- reactive oxygen species -- have a positive role to play, at least when it comes to fertility. In the study, mopping up reactive oxygen species with antioxidants in mouse ovaries blocked ovulation. So while women who are trying to get pregnant might consider knocking off the acai…
mpendergrast | June 21, 2010Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.
The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…
razib | October 11, 2009Eric Michael Johnson has a post up, Does Taking Birth Control Alter Women's Sexual Choices?, where he surveys a new paper,Does the contraceptive pill alter mate choice in humans?. Eric notes:
The concern of the researchers is that a woman who gets involved with a guy while on the pill might find that she's no longer compatible with him once she stops later on in the relationship. Imagine waking up next to your boyfriend, or even your husband, one morning only to discover that you're just not that into him. While female comedians make such scenarios commonplace in their stand-up routines,…
cwilcox | October 8, 2009
Boyish good looks - the next generation of sexy?
Men like Mike Rowe on the outs?
I couldn't help but notice that a new study has come out about the behavioral effects of hormonal contraception. It's all over the science news sites. With titles ranging from the conservative "Pill May Change Attraction" to the bolder "Taking the pill for past 40 years 'has put women off masculine men'"and "The pill 'gives women a taste for boyish men like Zac Efron'," this new publication has swept the media outlets by storm. This idea that birth control might have behavioral side effects isn't new, even I'…
gregladen | February 25, 2009 Why is there no Birth Control Pill for men?
The answer I'd like to propose can be summed up in two closely linked words pilfered from the question itself:
Men. Control.
Myriad aspects of life can be understood by recognizing a single critical fact, and the layered, sometimes complex, deeply biological effects of that fact. Males, by definition, can't have babies.
All mammalian males contribute to the reproductive endeavor, but often this contribution consists of a single cell, one per offspring. True, that cell contains a haploid copy of the male's DNA, the quality of which is…
cwilcox | January 18, 2009The estrogen hormone oestradiol is associated with just about every aspect of female beauty. As well as serving as a growth hormone for female reproductive organs, it's associated with having a symmetrical face, large breasts and a low waist-to-hip ratio. Now, the hormone is credited with one more association: it makes women serial monogamists.
Her relationships explainedby her body cheimstry?
For those who may not have heard of this term, let me explain. A serial monogamist is a person who has sequential relationships, and who tends not to spend much time alone in between partners. While…