Researcher finds strong link between contraception and HIV

Apr 22, 2010 / 23:04 pm

A researcher reported earlier this week that there is a strong scientific link between hormonal contraceptives and a woman's risk of contracting AIDS/HIV.

Joan Robinson, a researcher at the Population Research Institution, said that although over 50 medical studies to date show the link between the two, the scientific consensus has received little to no media coverage due to the economic and ideological force behind contraception.

“The science is settled,” Robinson says. “Hormonal contraceptives – the oral pill and Depo-Provera – increase almost all known risk factors for HIV, from upping a woman's risk of infection, to increasing the replication of the HIV virus, to speeding the debilitating and deadly progression of the disease,” reports Robinson in her article, titled “The Pill's Deadly affair with HIV/AIDS.”

Robinson explained on the PRI website Tuesday that hormonal contraceptives boost the number of specific cells in women which HIV uses to infect and proliferate in the body. According to the researcher, hormonal contraceptives also create an “ideal” site for HIV infection on the surface of a woman's uterus, eliminate the natural pH acid protection against infection and cause the fragile cervical tissue to grow beyond its natural bounds and replace what would normally be thick, protective membrane. Additionally, said Robinson, hormonal contraception can cause vaginal dryness which makes the environment susceptible to tears and abrasions, creating fertile sites for infection.

“The ‘family planning’ types dismiss out of hand the impressive body of scientific research demonstrating a Pill/HIV link,” Robinson continued, “preferring to rely on a handful of their own highly questionable trials which claim to find ‘no increase in HIV risk among users of oral contraceptives and Depo-Provera.’”

“This is like relying on a tobacco company to monitor a study on the link between cigarettes and cancer,” she charged. 

Robinson also wrote that despite the risks involved, many U.S-funded organizations promote these drugs to women in developing countries, even though they increase the odds of these women contracting HIV/AIDS.

“Population control groups continue to lobby for more hormonal contraception, not less,” she noted. “How many lives are being lost because we continue to ship boatloads of hormonal contraceptives to a continent and to countries laboring under an HIV/AIDS pandemic? Isn't it time that we stopped?”

Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, echoed Robinson and said on Wednesday that “Groups like USAID and the U.N. Population Fund must recognize the danger of recklessly pushing hormonal contraception on populations suffering from the scourge of AIDS.”

“How many Africa woman have died because their 'free' birth control pills cost them their lives?”

More information can be found at: http://pop.org/201004201199/the-pills-deadly-affair-with-hivaids