THE contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said on Saturday.
The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.
"We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said.
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Male infertility...bigest fail ever.
And as for hormones...I and my fellow women need to stop having our periods, or kids, or puberty, or menopause, because that releases a lot of hormones into the environment. Men should stop going through puberty as well, as that also involves hormones entering the environment through urine.
Anything to keep woman as brood mares only, huh?
@ Anonymous
The claim has no real backing up, because the ratio of infertile to fertile males has not changed.
Well as an environmental scientist, I can say there is evidence for pharmaceuticals causing intersex in fish.
...Since this came from the Vatican however, I doubt their real concern is the environment.
This sounds like the Vatican heard a bit of evidence that this might be true by some tenuous, microscopic link, and they jumped all over it and acted like it was some kind of scientifically established truth because it fit their agenda.
Are you happy now, Potentate Argyros?
...
How about the caffeine pissed out from all that espresso, pozzo ?
THE contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility
The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine
We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill
UNICEF estimates that around 26,000 children die every year of preventable causes(hunger, diesease, etc).
And you're concerned because we can't have more. Instead of being conserned about infertility, you should be more concerned about the children we do have.
As an environmental biologist specializing in the study of estrogen pollution, I feel pretty qualified to say that this should not be posted here... It's a pretty accurate assessment.http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56623
Now, to be fair, many chemical pesticides are also synthetic estrogens, but that doesn't make the threat from birth control pills any less serious. The human body does not process hormones and complex compounds very well, so we just pee them out. That leads to high levels of prescription drugs in our water supply.
A century and a half of solid evidence and most fundies call evolution a fairytale (although, to their credit, the RCC have finally caved on that one), but the scientific community puts out evidence on water pollution damaging fish and warranting further research into its seriousness towards man, and they treat it like it's an undeniable fact that it's going to wipe us out?
@ werewolf -- Horse manure! Where's the evidence?
Or more to the point -- horse urine ! Oral hormones are mostly metabolized before they're excreted, but endogenous hormones are excreted rather more readily -- to the point that mare urine has been used as a source of estrogen. Normal urination may prove to be a much greater source of estrogen in the environment than the pill!
Hmm. I've heard of this affecting male fish but not humans. If it is true, which I doubt, just how much of it is caused by agricultural runoff from hormones pumped into feed? This just seems like another excuse to blame the wimmenz for everything.
@Anonymous#898505 and ausador#898534
I totally fail to see how you can see obvious Roman Catholic FUD as 'not fundy'.
Now it's the pill, before it were condoms who according to the same Roman Catholic church 'do nothing to stop AIDS'
Based on what I read in New Scientist and general mainstream media, "THE contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility" seems to be a fairly widely held view unconnected to fundamentalism. You can, of course, question their decision to pick this thing to promote, and I don't think they would ever pretend to be neutral on this topic. However, they're not really making any strong claims that aren't proposed by environmental biologists. More recent studies have cast doubt on this, but that hardly makes it a 'lul wut'.
Bringing in evolution (Brain_in_a_jar) is just bizarre, since this is the Catholic Church not Creationists. There's so much to mock out there, why waste time mocking something that you assume is ridiculous because of the source?
Yes David, and do you think that might have anything to do with better healthcare and sanitary practices? I can assure you that the pill is not INCREASING fertility; as a matter of fact, it seems like women have more infertility problems now as a result of playing around with their hormones for so long.
Not that that has a damned thing to do with religion, it's just a side effect of so much hormonal birth control started at younger and younger ages.
And of course most people here will immediately attack me for suggesting that something scientific may actually CAUSE problems and accuse me of being a "fundie". I'll go ahead and tell you I'm not a Christian. I'm just someone who is able to admit that science fucks things up a good portion of the time. Before you argue with that one, check the side effects on your medications. Do you know anyone who is taking a medication to counteract the side effects of another medication? Thanks for proving my point.
As I live in a state that is concerned about the changes in the sex of fish, yes, there is some environmental effects.
HOWEVER - this is also most likely because male biased medical science just maxed out the BCPs when they were first made and only recently have the actually studied how much hormones need to be there. This means less overall side effects for those of us taking them and less to be "released" into the environment. We also have options such as the rings, which tend to have average estrogen blood levels of HALF that of today's common pills. Less into the body, less "out" of the body.
The contraceptive pill is...in part responsible for male infertility
Well, technically it is, I suppose. At least, on the part of the male she's sleeping with.
Though, I'd like to see some reports from reputable sources for the rest.
Nnnnno, the thing is, most sane Westerners...hell, most sane people realize "be fruitful and multiply" does not mean "fuck like bunnies on Viagra, and raise yourself a football team for JEEBUS!"
Well, I've heard this before and it makes some degree of sense. I haven't really looked into it, though, since last time I checked there were still plenty of people being born.
I don't know about male infertility, but from what I understand there is evidence that the contraceptive pill is affecting the environment. The hormones are extracted from womens bodies through urine, then not cleaned up by our sewage treatments.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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