Birth Control and Vampires
In case you haven't heard, birth control doesn't work.
Colorado Media Matters points us to claims by an anti-abortion activist who claims that birth control doesn't work, which talk-show host and Dan Caplis repeated on his talk show Monday:
Discussing contraception issues with co-host Craig Silverman on their August 27 broadcast, 630 KHOW-AM co-host Dan Caplis echoed recent remarks by an anti-abortion activist when he asked, "Well, hey, hasn't everybody heard that birth control fails at an alarmingly high rate?" But neither he nor Silverman mentioned that according to federal health statistics, the three most popular forms of birth control -- oral contraceptives, sterilization, and condoms -- have efficacy rates of 99.9 to 79 percent.Colorado Media Matters points out several statistics showing that birth control is, in fact, highly effective, but I don't need to read any of them. Here's why I know that birth control does work: Because there aren't four billion people in the United States. I know that a lot of people use birth control, be it condoms or pills, and if those methods weren't working on a fairly consistent basis, I would assume that there would be a hell of a lot more people in the U.S. right now. It's not rocket surgery; either birth control works, or nobody is actually having sex in this country. By that same logic, I know that vampires and zombies don't exist (at least not in the way that they are portrayed in popular culture). In fact, scientists proved that vampires don't exist in a study last year:
Every time the vampire feeds, the vampire population increases by one and the human population decreases by one. [University of Central Florida theoretical physics professor Costas] Efthimiou supposed that the first vampire arrived on Jan. 1, 1600, when the human population was 536,870,911. That means there would have been two vampires and 536,870,910 humans on Feb. 1, four vampires and 536,870,908 humans on March 1, and so forth. With the vampire population increasing geometrically and the human population decreasing geometrically, by the 30th month the human race would have been wiped out. "In the long run, humans cannot survive under these conditions, even if our population were doubling each month," Efthimiou says, "and doubling is clearly way beyond the human capacity of reproduction." Zombies, also thought to turn victims into their own kind, present a similar problem.I'm not sure why you would want to believe that birth control doesn't work (or why you would want to think that vampires and zombies are real), but if you truly do believe it, then you and your brain have some catching up to do. And yes, Dan Caplis is really a lawyer.
Comments
Submitted by Bryce (not verified) on Thu, 2007-08-30 10:17.
Dan Caplis is one of the dumbest people on radio, it amazes me that he still has a radio show or a legal practice.
Submitted by ohwilleke (not verified) on Wed, 2007-08-29 18:16.
"[E]ither birth control works, or nobody is actually having sex in this country."
Actually, probably a bit of both.
Believe it or not, married people have sex much more often than non-married people (even if unmarried people in relationships). The increased popularity of college educations and various other social trends have postponed marriage dramatically. Hence, less sex per capita.
Also, while older Americans have sex more than most people assume, they have sex less often than younger people. Hence, again, less sex per capita, as the American population ages, largely due to better medical care.
And finally, teen sex rates are about as low as they have been in U.S. history, largely due to social pressures and economic opportunities for women, because before Americans were against teen sex, they were for it (within the confines of marriages entered into at young ages), so again, less sex per capita.
So, there is both less sex and more contraception.
Of course, the other factor, and it is an important one, impacting "natural growth" in population (as opposed to immigration) is abortion.
So, if you really want to be accurate about it, American population growth is slow mostly because of effective birth control, abortion and less sex.
Incidentally, IIRC, the effectiveness rates are on a per year of normal sexual activity basis, and not on a per sexual encounter basis when used correctly, and two rates are usually quoted for each method (the normal amount of screw up rate and the no user error rate).
Thus, a woman who is on the pill for 25 years, making a typical number of mistakes in taking it and remaining sexually active for the entire period has a roughly 72% of a pregnancy in her lifetime, but without making mistakes in taking the pill she has a mere 2.5% lifetime risk of getting pregnant.
Used correctly, a condom works 97% of the time on an annual basis, but due to typical screw ups in using it, the effectiveness of typical condom use is 86%.
In contrast, a fertile person not using contraception has only a 15% chance of not getting pregnant in the course of a year.
Submitted by Kevin Jones (not verified) on Thu, 2007-08-30 11:53.
"I’m not sure why you would want to believe that birth control doesn’t work"
I don't know how faithful a Catholic Caplis is, but most forms of birth control are rejected by consistent Catholics as a perversion of the marital act, which is iconic of Christ's self-giving love for the Church. He could be getting his data from Catholics credulous of any anti-contraception claims.
That said, everybody probably knows somebody whose contraception failed. Without the backup of abortion, there'd be a lot more "accidents" running around.
There are also environmental concerns. Check out Birth Control Pills Cause Frankenfish
http://www.boulderweekly.com/waynesword.html
