« The Cost of Sprawl in Sydney: Lessons for the Stimulus | Hugh Bartling's Blog | Another Kingston TN Coal Ash Disaster Could Happen Elsewhere »
Vatican: The Pill Is Responsible for Environmental Pollution
I'm not sure how to comment on this article from the Sydney Morning Herald:
THE contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said on Saturday.
The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.
"We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating.
"We are faced with a clear anti-environmental effect which demands more explanation on the part of the manufacturers."
Advertisement
I think the releases from the Pill are pretty much documented Hugh, and the sexual effects, on at least some species, as well.
That said, seeing the source, pretty easy to guess the motivation. Sigh.
January 6, 2009 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Quinn, you're right: I probably shouldn't have been so glib. The ultimate environmental effect of pharmaceuticals (including their improper disposal) is something that deserves greater scrutiny.
That said--I'm a little more worried about antibiotics (especially their liberal use in industrial livestock operations) than the Pill.
As you suggest, the crassness of their focus makes it a bit difficult to take them seriously.
This is especially the case after Benedict's insane embrace last week of homophobia as tantamount to saving the rain forests!
January 6, 2009 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pharmaceutical spillover into the environment really does need to be looked at more closely. Traces of anti-biotics are already in city water supplies and is also being found in private wells.
During a conversation with a hospice worker, I found out that they are no longer allowed to flush leftover medications down the toilet. Instead the meds are dissolved inside a small packet which is taken away with them to be incinerated.
Of course, the problem remains of what becomes of the ash from the incineration. Are we breathing it now instead of drinking it?
January 6, 2009 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's no question that traces of pharmaceuticals are showing up in the environment.
I haven't, though, heard that it's birth control hormones in particular that are having notable effects on wildlife.
Anyone have cites for that?
Anti-biotics, anti-depressants, and the like are at least as widespread and their impact is less understood.(Human anti-biotics, I should say - livestock antibiotics are an order of magnitude greater And many industrial pollutants have also been found to influence endocrine system changes and sex.
January 6, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
While you rightly point out that livestock are regularly given antibiotics they are also liberally injected with all sorts of hormones.
I recall reading in a Rolling Stone article on factory farming that there is a law stating any pig that cannot walk out of its stall and into the slaughterhouse trailer under its own strength cannot legally be sold for meat. Thus, the factory farm solution to an unhealthy pig was to inject the poor creature full of steroids to temporarily allow it to make the short trek.
If hormones are harming us I'm more inclined to believe eating toxic meat is the culprit rather than discarded birth control.
January 6, 2009 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fifty years. For fifty years I have listened to this crap. I aint taken my orders from men who wear dresses as to my sexual mores.
January 6, 2009 8:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Kinda' explains my SleepinJeezus, no?
January 6, 2009 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I bet it won't be long until that Mega Disasters show on The History Channel has a scenario where female urine destroys planet Earth.
January 6, 2009 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
An Inconvenient Sploosh?
January 6, 2009 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right - everything will be fine if women will just stop peeing.
January 6, 2009 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
*giggles*
January 6, 2009 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is why they used to put them in huts during their menstral cycles.
January 6, 2009 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's also why they insist of keeping the seat down.
January 6, 2009 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Vatican puts its cardinals in huts during their menstrual cycles? Whatsatusay?
And all this time, I assumed it was bird houses.
January 6, 2009 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
As a former Catholic, nothing drives me more nuts than the (disingenous or self-deluding, I dunno, you decide) intellectual conniptions that the two most recent popes performed to continue to support the anti-birth-control message inherent in Paul VI's Humanae Vitae. Both were highly educated scholars, and there's no way they shouldn't know better. I can understand for practical reasons I won't go into why they might not want to directly challenge it for a few more decades, but to loudly continue to defend it is a whole 'nother thing. It's exactly like saying antibiotics are evil, and in their heart, I think they have doubt, know it's hypocritical, that it goes against the Catholic message of god giving humans intelligence, in his likeness, in order to rise above animal breeding status to a more spiritual one.
January 6, 2009 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
p.s. To clarify, I think an anti-abortion message is very consistent with the Catholic faith. But again, being against anti-birth control is like being against antibiotics. And theologically, the Catholic church has not run along those lines, since like, oh, the Renaissance. Anti-birth-control simply doesn't fit the whole picture.
January 6, 2009 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually there was excellent moral reasoning by some theologians back in the 60's to allow birth control. But natch... those with the power, being celibate and all.... won the day - in the short run.
Interesting to me how many former Catholics there are on this site! (I consider myself a "heretic" ... so I retain my sense of being Catholic, but I do it in my own way with own beliefs. In other words, why I should I let "them" define me?)
January 6, 2009 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sometimes I think the two most recent have some other bones or resentments against Vatican II and John XXIII and other things he did to the church, and that's why they are prone to support Paul VI.
January 6, 2009 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to bug you. But you really are no more a former Catholic than a former Jew.
There are cultural aspects of this. Sometimes we say it is an illness developed from birth.
Even though my last confession was sometime in the sixties, the guilt will always be with you. And as a therapist, you know how this goes.
But there are so many things that the modern Roman Catholics have accomplished. And I would never wish them to go away unless all religion went away.
I am going to discuss this sometime in the future.
There are some really fine Christians out there.
January 6, 2009 11:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I never saw guilt like some Lutherans have guilt. Midwestern Lutherans do guilt way better than the RC's ever did it.
January 6, 2009 11:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
TheraP you must be speaking of Italian and French Roman Catholics. They will follow feast days, go to church every Sunday, and have a lot of fun with the maid on Saturday afternoons.
Irish Catholics just drink and wish they had never seen a man in skirts.
January 6, 2009 11:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't agree that John Paul II was highly educated. In comparison to Paul VI and Bene XVI, JPII was the village vicar. He was prone to mysticism and simple faith, whereas Paul was an internationalist and Bene a master theologian.
That said, it is even more perverse that the “educated” create these backward arguments against venial matters.
January 6, 2009 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder if this has anything to do with the Vatican's recent decision on January 1st to opt-out of international law when it sees fit. Up until January 1st, it always accepted international legal customs and law as sovereign; now it takes the position that it will pick through treaties and international "common law" on a case-by-case basis. Didn't the UN just pass a rule decriminalizing homosexuality?
Incidentally, it also rejected Italian law as governing its internal governance. I wonder if Italy is thinking about doing something crazy like grant civil rights to homosexuals or upholding abortion rights.
January 6, 2009 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink