Is there a Contraception Conspiracy?

As early as 1930, asbestos manufacturers knew that asbestos was potentially harmful to their employees, those who installed their products and those living around the products. In 1932, a doctor reported that 29% of the workers at one Johns-Manville plant were suffering from asbestosis. But getting away from asbestos would have meant huge costs for the construction industry and, in the end, the consumer. So the manufacturers felt justified in covering up the fact and lobbying the media and the government to keep the status quo. There is always a “good reason,” a “good excuse.” This situation continued until 1989, when the EPA finally banned the product.

Often people brush off conspiracy theories with derision, wary of the constructions of some paranoid or fanatical talking head to cause fear. Most of us prefer dismissing such theories (and some should be dismissed), because they are difficult to imagine in a country that has the Statue of Liberty as a symbol. Unfortunately, from the Tuskegee Study to the Watergate, many such theories have been proven.

What about contraception? Could there be a conspiracy going on in that industry?

A number of troubling facts about the contraception industry come from a recent presentation by Karen Langhart at the premiere of our documentary Natural Love Stories and our conversations with her. Karen is the mother of Erika Langhart, who died in 2011 at the age of 24 from the Nuvaring. You can watch the entire video of her talk below (filmed by Peter Northrop,peternorthropvideo@gmail.com).

Other disturbing indications come from my interview with a physician who is a clinical investigator in charge of drug trials for a company with multiple testing sites in the US. Let’s look at these facts and how they add up.

To have a conspiracy, you need conspirators, a group of individuals or organizations working together. In our case, it is clear that some multi-billion dollars pharmaceutical corporations such as Merck, Bayer or Pfizer are heavily invested in controlling the contraceptives market. We also observe that public or governmental organizations are acting in coordination with these corporations.

Secondly, a conspiracy involves activities. In this case, the problem is actually the absence of activities that should be taking place for the protection and safety of the people, or merely for the sake of justice. I am talking about very basic precautions that are routine for common drugs and materials. Or stories that should reported to the public by the media.

Finally, a conspiracy includes secret planning and deliberate actions. That’s a lot harder to prove, obviously. A conspiracy reveals itself through external signs and outcomes, and it takes then extensive investigation to prove that there is a secret partnership at a high level of power.

My goal today is to present some signs that should alert the attention of us all. Here they are:

• It started with the 1970 Nelson Pill Hearings: in this 2000 article from the New York Times, Barbara Seaman, a tireless worker for women’s rights, writes of the hearings: “At the hearings’ end, F.D.A. commissioner at the time, Charles Edwards, submitted a 600-word document, ‘What You Should Know About Birth Control Pills,’ describing the risks, side effects and contraindications of oral contraceptives. In response, however, to pressure from professional, industrial and government interests, the agency submitted a 100-word revision that mentioned only one complication, blood clots.”
• Zoom ahead to 2011: just two weeks after Erika Langhart died from the Nuvaring, the FDA was meeting to review the increased dangers of 3rd and 4th generation contraceptives: Yaz, Ortho Evra and NuvaRing. “It was painfully obvious that the words from parents and family spoken at these hearings were neither considered nor responded to,” said Karen Langhart. “We believe the outcome was pre-determined…In fact it was later learned that several of the doctors on the voting committee had financial ties to the very pharmaceutical companies they were reviewing.”
• Later, in reviewing studies about the risk of blood clots, the FDA chose to consider a study sponsored by drug manufacturers versus a much more incriminating study from an independent group in Denmark.
• Large medical organizations like the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) are partly funded by large pharmaceutical companies. At the 2012 ACOG convention, Karen Langhart witnessed a day-long presentation about how their drugs were a good response to PCOS. When a medical member of the audience proposed that these drugs were not actually treating the cysts, she was simply ignored.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics endorsing IUDs for teen is another troubling instance of large public organizations making coordinated moves to promote these products as Bayer, the uncontested product leader, campaigns for their use as a safe alternative to hormonal contraceptives.

Here are events and fact that show where normal prevention/education is not taking place:

• Pressure on the media: the CNN show Anderson Cooper 360 worked on a three-night special about the dangers of Nuvaring that was ready to be aired in March 2014, the time of the settlement announcement for Merck’s settlement for the Nuvaring. “Unbelievably…the report was not aired until over a year later – after Merck was successful in convincing over 95% of plaintiffs to settle.  Just one of three segments was aired in the final analysis.  The reports slated for nights two and three – which were focused on scrutinizing Merck, the FDA , the AMA and Planned Parenthood were scrapped,” reports Karen Langhart. “This was precisely the timing of Merck’s announcement of a ‘settlement reached’ for the NuvaRing and it was critical for them to get enough plaintiffs to sign onto the settlement.  Obviously, the CNN report would have been very detrimental to their goal.”
• The American Cancer Society is hiding that hormonal contraceptive are a major cancer risk, even though the World Health Organization classified them as Class 1 carcinogen, with asbestos and smoking. In the article Priorities for the primary prevention of breast cancer by Colditz and Bohlke in Vol 64, Issue 3, the authors mention every possible contributing factor except that of prescribed estrogen and/or progestin for birth control. “This is more than a simple omission. I still think the investigation into why this data was left out is just as important as quantification of breast cancer contribution,” said the physician investigator I interviewed.
• The absence of any long-term safety study about contraceptives components: such studies are common practice for drugs with a wide use.  Why don’t they exist for hormonal contraceptives?
• The fact that contraceptive studies screen for risk factors but doctors don’t, as the physician investigator reported to me. Studies on contraceptives usually screen patients with “frequent migraine headaches, and with genetic factors such as abnormalities of protein S, protein C and Lyden factor 5, which require a blood test to verify”. How many doctors require a blood test before putting their patients on contraceptives? Now we don’t even need a doctor in some states like Oregon where these drugs are sold over-the-counter.
• Could we add the curious insistence of the US Government to force corporations to subsidize the use of these pills by requiring them to get insurance that covers them? Or the obvious, consistent misrepresentation of the natural methods’ effectiveness by the Center for Disease Control?

Who wants to believe that there is such a conspiracy could be going on? In fact, many people feel threatened or defensive when we even mention that contraceptives are a harmful substance. “That’s so dangerous,” said a commenter on an article about fertility awareness that we recently published in a local on-line news source. There is a fear that we’ll go back to the “dark ages” without any family planning ability at all. We aren’t at all advocating that women give up their ability to avoid pregnancy.

I think most people involved in the contraceptives industry and medical industry are actually well intentioned. They want women to be able to space their children, they don’t want them to be used by men. They want a healthy solution to medical issues. But all of these goals can better be achieved without contraceptives. And there is little openness to alternatives. In response to the dangers of contraceptives, we are told that pregnancy is much more likely to result in death than contraceptives, so therefore the risks are acceptable. Defenders of contraception also conveniently ignore or even disparage the effective and healthy options of fertility awareness based methods.

I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to prove that some high powered individuals worked together to make sure that women were lied to about the real dangers of birth control, like we saw with the tobacco industry a few years ago. But I believe that women are smarter than these people believe, and women don’t need the people in power to make their decisions for them. And I thank courageous people like the many leaders in the NFP movement since 1970, and now Karen Langhart, Holly Grigg Spall, Abby Epstein and Ricki Lake for speaking up about these issues. For more information about the topic of contraception’s dangers and deceptions we encourage you to check out the upcoming conference Contraceptive Conundrum at Georgetown University. As Karen said in closing her speech this week, quoting Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”