Survey On Danger Of The Pill

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31407, 28 June 1967, Page 22

Survey On Danger Of The Pill

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright)

NEW YORK, June 27.

About 90 per cent of the serious and even fatal side-effects of birth-control pills may go unreported because of “fear, plain craven fear,” the “Ladies’ Home Journal” has claimed in New York.

“The spectre of a malpractice suit is probably the main reason why the (United States) Food and Drug Administration has been forced to admit that probably only one in 10 adverse reactions ever gets recorded,” the magazine said.

The claim appears in an article entitled “The Terrible Trouble With the Birth-Con-trol Pills” in the magazine’s July issue. A survey by the magazine indicates that 40 per cent of obstetricians believe women should not take hormone contraceptives for longer than four years for fear of a bloodclotting disease. But the Food and Drug Administration last year was forced to lift the recommended time because of the almost universal preference for “the pill.” The magazine quotes the administration’s advisory committee chairman, Dr. Louis Hellman, as saying: “We knew the four-year limit was unenforceable, like prohibition.

We thought it wiser to remove the limitation than to let a lot of black distribution develop.” The article says an estimated six million American women take the pill “because their demand for it is so strong that their own doctors, the medical profession in general and possibly even the Federal Government, do not dare to try to forbid the medication.”