hmmm…

I loved C&C Music Factory when I was younger. One of the first cassettes I owned was theirs, and in addition to “Gonna Make You Sweat” (you have to have that one, right?) it had the song “Things That Make You Go Hmmm.” Now, I’ll be the first to admit that honestly? It’s not that terrific a song. However, it is a good catch phrase, because often, when I’m reading the news,  I go “hmmm.”

 

Witness this article. (For the too-lazy-to-click, a summary follows herein.) Apparently, an FDA panel “probes birth control pill effectiveness.” We will assume that the verb choice there was entirely random, although I have my doubts. The result of the probing was that the FDA concluded that newer, lower-dose contraceptives may have twice the failure rate of higher-dose contraceptives and is considering “whether it should require new contraceptive drugs to meet a standard of effectiveness before they approved for the market.” In other words, they’re thinking about banning lower-dose hormonal contraceptives if their effectiveness rate does not meet the standard.

 

Sounds reasonable on the face of it, doesn’t it? I mean, if you’re taking the pill, then you don’t want to get pregnant, so you should have the guarantee that your pill and your sex will not result in your getting knocked up. Except then…You look at this a little more closely. (It’s okay if you didn’t. I’m doing that for you. Keep reading.) And then you go “hmmm…”

 

Because what does “twice the failure rate” mean? That means that a lower-dose hormonal contraceptive may have a failure rate as high as 2%. Let me repeat that. TWO PERCENT. (People consider using all caps to be “shouting.” I am fully aware of this. And am shouting at the FDA right now. Very loudly.) They’re considering taking a drug off the market that has a TWO PERCENT potential failure rate.

 

Y’all, Tylenol only works on my headaches about one-quarter of the time.

 

True, I don’t end up peeing onto a little stick first thing in the morning worrying about whether the Tylenol worked, but on the other hand, blood pressure medication hasn’t any 98% guarantee that it’ll work, and if it doesn’t, you can die. It’s hard for me to believe that this is really any kind of true concern for women on the part of the FDA, except perhaps in a “aw, the poor little women are too silly to understand the so-hard maths, so let’s help them out by taking away the option” kind of way. Because here’s the thing: you could just tell people what the failure rate is and let them make their own decisions. It’s a novel concept, I know. And for an organization that actually argued that an HPV vaccine would make middle-schoolers into promiscuous sluts and over-the-counter Plan B would make those middle-schoolers indiscriminate promiscuous sluts, it might be an awfully big step to take. But I’m telling you, it could work.

 

See, what happens if we take lower-dose contraceptives off the market is that we end up with a bunch of women who are forced to resort to barrier methods only, all of which have a much higher failure rate than TWO PERCENT. Because it’s not like people just invented or wanted lower-dose contraceptives for the fun of it. Contraception isn’t like a vending machine, where sometimes you want a Snickers and sometimes Dots sound better. The reason so many women are on lower-dose contraceptives is because their bodies cannot tolerate higher-dose pills. So if the FDA bans lower-dose contraceptives, then it is increasing the likelihood that women will have unwanted pregnancies. By significantly more than TWO PERCENT.

 

Somehow—call me crazy—this makes it very difficult for me to believe that the FDA has the best interests of women at heart. It seems a lot more like…they’re trying to make sure all of us promiscuous sluts have less access to birth control.

 

But who would think that the FDA under the control of the Bush administration would do that?