Without knowledge there can be no morality -- Mary Wollstonecraft

WOMEN'S HEALTH

ON ALERT, INC.

WHOA is committed to educating women and health care providers about cutting-edge issues in women's health, free of economic and political bias.

Susan Rako, M.D. is founder of Women's Health On Alert and the author of The Blessing of the Curse: No More Periods? and The Hormone of Desire: The Truth About Testosterone, Sexuality, and Menopause . An advocate for women's health rights, Dr. Rako is also a Boston-based psychiatrist who has been in private practice for thirty years. Her memoir, That's How the Light Gets In: Memoir of a Psychiatrist, was launched to acclaim in November 2005.

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT,
Dr. Susan Rako:

HERE ARE SOME IMPORTANT FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

1. The daily, nonstop use of the potent estrogen in the birth control pills designed to do away with menstrual periods results in a woman’s having LESS AVAILABLE NATURAL TESTOSTERONE in her body. The consequences of this state of testosterone deficiency can be subtle to severe. One thing that women taking pills to do away with their periods notice is that they have significantly less interest in making love, and experience less pleasure in sex. Many women have told me that when they report this to their doctors, they are told that “the Pill” has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. The truth is that “the Pill” can have EVERYTHING to do with it, and nonstop use of “the Pill” can absolutely be the cause.
   

• In my book, The Hormone of Desire, you will find everything you (and your doctors) should know about the vital role that testosterone plays not only in a woman’s sexual functioning, but also in building healthy bones, protecting against depression, keeping muscles strong, protecting against heart attacks and strokes, keeping hair shiny, keeping eyes from developing “dry eye,” and contributing to the health of every organ system in a woman’s body. NONSTOP USE OF THE BIRTH CONTROL PILL REDUCES THE LEVELS OF TESTOSTERONE WE NEED FOR OPTIMAL HEALTH.
  

2. Using potent hormones non-stop, with the consequence of doing away with any monthly bleed, deprives a woman of the only naturally-occuring means of ridding her body of excess stored iron. Excess stored iron is a risk factor for heart attacks and strokes.
   
   

3. It has been shown that the use of birth control pills is a partner to high-risk strains of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) in CAUSING cancer of the cervix. More than 99% of all cervical cancers are caused by certain strains of HPV, and women who use birth control pills are at GREATER risk. Further – we know that the longer-term a woman uses birth control pills, the greater the risk. No studies have yet been done to evaluate the INCREASED risk of cancer of the cervix in women who use birth-control pills NONSTOP. Common sense tells us that it is likely that nonstop use of the birth control pill will further increase this risk. While cancer of the cervix can often be cured, unfortunately some such cancers are resistant to treatment. Even here in the United States, several thousand women, some of them young women, die each year from cancer of the cervix. A few years back, Dr. Jerome Groopman wrote an important article in the New Yorker magazine about what is NOW an epidemic of HPV infection -- and about his experience with one college-age woman whose life he couldn’t save (issue of September 13, 1999 – “A Sometimes Lethal Sexual Epidemic That Condoms Can’t Stop.”)
   

4. ALL of these risks -- yet taking “the Pill” nonstop does NOT immediately do away with bleeding. Unpredictable bleeding and spotting often continues for months. This bleeding can be as heavy as a “usual period.” On the basis of a television advertising campaign that underplayed the facts about the bleeding and distracted the viewer from attending to the disclaimer about the risks, in December, 2004, the FDA warned the makers of Seasonale to stop this irresponsible advertising. You may have noticed that these ads have stopped.
   

5. The pharmaceutical companies who are encouraging women to do away with their periods are jockeying for a position in an INDUSTRY worth more than 2 BILLION dollars a year.
   

The largest uncontrolled experiment in medical history has begun, with healthy women as the test subjects. On September 5, 2003 the FDA approved the pharmaceutical drug, Seasonale. In May, 2007 the FDA approved the first pharmaceutical drug, Lybrel, for complete menstrual suppression.

Rushed to market by Halloween, Seasonale was the first drug in a 2.2 billion dollar per year market (according to the “Information for Investors” posted early-on by the pharmaceutical company, Barr Labs) urging menstrual suppression for the sake of convenience on healthy girls and women of fertile age. In spite of the fact that Lybrel claims to suppress bleeding, 41% of women still experience bleeding and spotting at the end of one year's use.

Seasonale was tested for only one year on fewer than 300 women. Dosing millions of women non-stop with birth control pills is, in a word, reckless. Common sense dictates caution in doing away with the normal menstrual cycle. In 2000, when first I read about the prospect of convincing women that the normal menstrual cycle could safely be dispensed with, on the basis of what I already knew about women's reproductive physiology, I was more worried. I undertook to research the subject fully, and what I have learned concerns me even further. My book: The Blessing of the Curse: No More Periods? details and documents the risks. I have pledged to donate all future royalties for this book to Women's Health On Alert (WHOA).