Thrombosis: the pill much more dangerous than the vaccine?

Thrombosis: the pill much more dangerous than the vaccine?

John Burger - Published on 06/11/21

During the debates surrounding the temporary suspension of a Covid-19 vaccine in the United States because of the risk of thrombosis it could cause, women were surprised to learn that hormonal contraception could also cause blood clots to be formed.

When the Us health authorities recommended suspending the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against Covid-19 after six women had developed thrombosis (formation of rare blood clots, editor's note), some scientists immediately wanted to reassure the population by comparing probabilities. In the same way that there is a higher risk of being involved in a car accident than in a plane crash, taking hormonal contraceptives has a much higher risk of developing thrombosis than after administering this vaccine.

But instead of reassuring women, this information aroused a lot of anger: "Why has no one ever told us about this risk?" In fact, this risk is clearly specified in the package leaflet of these medicines. But who really reads these documents, with their lowercase characters? However, it should be noted immediately that blood clots that may have been associated with the vaccine are more dangerous than those associated with birth control pills. While the former appear in the brain, the latter appear in the legs and can move to the lungs. However, the fact remains that the risk of blood clots related to the pill is much higher.

"I am angry because I have not been informed of this risk."

The anger of these women who learned of the risks associated with the pill was so great, after the discovery that the Covid-19 vaccine could lead to the formation of clots, that the New York Times echoed it: "Part of my anger is due to the fact that a drug I was taking to control my fertility, ultimately threatened my life," Kelly Tyrrell, a running enthusiast, who was 37 when doctors discovered life-threatening blood clots in her lungs, told the Times. " "I'm angry because I've never been informed of this risk."

Mellissa Moschella, associate professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America, has researched contraception from a biomedical ethics perspective. Last week, she spoke about this issue and some of its implications with the U.S. edition of Aleteia: "Women who take the pill have a much higher risk of developing blood clots, and no one seems to worry more about it than that. Why is it surprising that double standards should be met.

The one in a thousand risk for women taking the pill is "much higher than the [possible] risk of one in a million of the Johnson &johnsonvaccine," she continues, even though the type of blood clot in this case is somewhat less dangerous than the cerebral blood clot associated with the vaccine." According to her, women had reason to be furious when they learned of it. "These risks are of course on the package leaflet, but the doctors do not point them out any more than Mellissa Moschella deplores. These risks are low, but they are no less serious. If many women were informed, they would certainly choose other methods of contraception or another treatment instead of the pill when it is prescribed to treat a particular problem. »

Double standards

Professor Moschella also denounces the fact that contraception is "the only field where doctors systematically prescribe the same thing for very diverse problems, with very many underlying causes, instead of really seeking to treat these causes". "The pill is prescribed for everything from polycystic ovary syndrome to mood swings related to the female cycle, very heavy or painful periods, acne, or any other kind of problems," she said. " "Generally, all these elements indicate that something is wrong with the woman's cycle. There are concrete ways to address these underlying causes to help the woman feel better, instead of stopping a major aspect of her biology and thus masking the underlying problems that can then resurface years later, when she stops the pill and wants to conceive a child."

"This highlights a bigger underlying problem in women's health where we too often settle for a one-size-fits-all solution to mask or even exacerbate a problem," she says. Not to mention that, according to her, during the very first years of development of hormonal contraceptives, women who participated in the pill experiments suffered "extremely serious consequences on their health".

Professor Moschella therefore states that most women who take the pill "often ignore potential long-term side effects such as blood clots, increased risk of breast cancer and lower fertility. According to her, "it is partly for a political reason" that these dangers are ignored: "sexual freedom and the ability to have sexual relations without consequences take precedence over all other considerations. Warnings about health risks are considered unethical about absolute sexual freedom. »