There’s still an awful lot of misinformation and unnecessary fear around about the contraceptive pill, as evidenced by a debate that I got into recently over on Blogcritics.
So a very interesting report in the Independent today:
The contraceptive pill saves the lives of up to 3,000 women a year in the UK and Europe, according to new medical research.
A number of studies now suggest that the Pill reduces the risk of ovarian cancer significantly. One study, reported in the British Journal of Cancer this week, found a protective effect of up to 50 per cent for Pill users, while another, reported in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, found a similar effect after analysing data on the use of the Pill since its introduction.
According to the studies, women who use the contraceptive pill reduce their risk of developing ovarian cancer by more than a third, and the longer they take it for, the greater the protection …
…The report says women who used the Pill at some time are 30 per cent less likely to develop the cancer. The protection increases with the length of time a woman takes the Pill by around 5 per cent a year, to about 50 per cent protection for long-term use. The reduced risk was seen in women both with and without a family history or genetic predisposition to ovarian cancer.
Of course there are other potential problems – this is only focusing on one form of cancer, but I fear a lot of the knee-jerk “it must be bad for you” reaction has an underlying moral focus of – “it makes your life easier, frees you to sleep with whoever you want, so there must be a big negative in there”.
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