Customer Reviews

The bitter pill: How safe is the "perfect contraceptive"?

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Ellen Grant, a doctor who has done critical research on hormones for many years, wrote this book to give readers the information they need to protect their lives. Please, if you haven't already, read this book and reconsider your use of the birth control pill and other hormones. What you don't know, and what your doctor either doesn't know or doesn't tell you, can literally kill you. This book is fascinating and an easy read. I really hope that it comes back into print, because a whole new generation of hormone patients must be told the truth about what they're doing to their bodies. If you don't want to buy it, try your library or inter-library loan.

This book and its follow up "Sexual Chemistry. Understanding our Hormones, The Pill and HRT" shows how, contrary to the spin, it is not only the high dose Pills of yesteryear which cause problems.

In fact researchers such as the author who took part in some of the earliest Pill trials were provided with a range of doses, high and low, by the drugs' companies including the same doses currently found in today's contraceptive pills. And the researchers still found major side effects which accurately predicted the huge rises in many illnesses in women we see today.

What is most worrying is the immunosuppressive element of these steroid drugs - women can take them, have a major deterioriation in health but not notice this until it is too late. Because the steroids suppress the immune system and mask the side effects. The symptoms of these side effects have to pierce through the immunosuppressive mask before they are noticed by the woman or girl herself and this can take years.

So even when the women are diagnosed with cancers, autoimmune disorders etc, they may not realize that these drugs have exposed them to illnesses towards which they would otherwise not been predisposed. Both Dr Grant's books demonstrate how it's not only those who get immediate reactions to the drugs on first taking them who are at risk.

This author does not have an anti contraception agenda (contraception does not automatically mean the contraceptive Pill). She demonstrates as well how the widespread prescription of these drugs for non contraceptive purposes is also having a devastating effect on the health of women and girls.

Ellen Grant is (or was) a British doctor who is in favor of contraception and was involved in early clinical tests of birth control pills. In this book she describes the many drawbacks of the pills and issues a call (futile, in my view) for improving them. The data are drawn from published studies. Unfortunately, this book is about 20 years old, and she occasionally uses terms that are unfamiliar to American readers. A more up-to-date study of the pills and their risks is needed. Still a good starting point, though.