Trade offs, all is trade offs

The problem is that those pushing these drugs may be either unaware, downplay or remain silent about possible ‘trade offs’.

We’re the recipients told “ you do realise that taking this drug could increase the risk of you suffering a brain tumour by 560%”?

How many people were told of the ‘trade offs’ before allowing medical ‘professionals’ to inject them with an untested* experimental drug?

*Untested in the normal understanding of the term prior to 2021.

https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-078078

Amazing what a bit of Google-fu can find, since the ShoutyGraph is keen on linking to its own articles, but nothing actually relevant to the article.

And yes, it’s a proper scientific article: technical and dry as old biscuits. And indeed, there seems to be a marked increase for three substances.
Such a shame that, as AndyF already surmised, the base number is so small….

Also note that if you read the BMJ article well, you see that the people used in the statistic-fu were already diagnosed with this type of cancer, which seems to be, as our Host surmised, “the price for being able to bear babies”, and mostly post-menopausal. ( check the median age… It’s in the abstract..)

The people with the “increased risk” were the ones within that particular group who had to undergo surgery for this relatively common and generally quite “benign” type of cancer.
As in: the ones seemingly already extremely sensitive to progesterogens to begin with in this respect.

There’s (unsurprisingly) a link there, but nothing as sensational and “dangerous” as the ShoutyGraph tries to make of it.

As usual, if the increase was a factor 100 or even 10 bigger… Might be a case for worry. But this? Wibble.

Of all the harms caused by hormonal birth control, aggravated risk of a rare cancer is not the biggest concern. A quick trawl of Reddit reveals many, many stories of women whose feelings about their partners suddenly changed when they either stopped or started birth control. For example – https://www.reddit.com/r/birthcontrol/comments/hh5igt/anyone_have_experiences_with_birth_control/

https://youtu.be/xpoUl1MzTq4?si=oWRihGKzV9dt2OGd

From Chris Williamson’s channel.

“ Dr Sarah Hill is the author of This Is Your Brain On Birth Control, a psychologist and professor at TCU whose research focusses on women, health, and sexual psychology.

Women ovulate, and this changes their behaviour across their cycle. Unless they take hormonal birth control that is, in which case their behaviour changes even more dramatically in ways that no one anticipated and there is evidence to suggest that this might not just be temporary.

Expect to learn why hormonal birth control can make women prioritise wealth in men, why women who come off are less sexually satisfied with partners they chose when they were on birth control, the relationship between taking the pill with anxiety, depression, bisexuality and stress, whether it’s a good thing for women to have sex with men who they wouldn’t marry and much more…”