I have lots of other things to catch up with, but it seems I'm most productive when I'm angry - and this idiotic article (and a swathe of similar ones) makes me EXTREMELY angry.
So what's wrong with it?
Here's the headline: "Failure of contraceptive implants sets back battle against teen pregnancies"
and the subtitle: "Bad press surrounding 584 cases in which women trusting in Implanon implants fell pregnant is a blow to family-planning advisers"
Terrifying - 584 failures - that's got to be bad, right? Well, no.
Why not?
Because statistically, that number of 584 failures makes Implanon an AMAZINGLY EFFECTIVE contraceptive.
Let's take a look at a table of statistics about contraception - I've taken my stats from here
Contraception failure rates are measured by the number of women out of 100 who would get pregnant over a year using that contraceptive. So as you can see above, using no contraception at all, 85% of women WOULD get pregnant. Condoms have between a 2 and 15% failure rate. That means between two and 15 women will pregnant over a year whilst relying on condoms for contraception. So if 82,000 women were using condoms for contraceptive protection for a year, between 1640 and 12300 of those women would get pregnant.
So let's just compare those condom statistics back to the headline: We are told in the article that 82,000 women per year are fitted with an Implanon implant. Compared to condoms, 584 failures out of 82,000 women is very low - far less than 1%.
But that's not the end of the story.
It's not the end of the story because the 584 pregnancies they're talking about in this article weren't over one year. They were over ELEVEN YEARS. We're talking about barely one twentieth of a percent, 0.06%.
If all of these women had used condoms instead, we'd be looking at an extra 11,716 women who would likely be pregnant due to contraceptive failure - not just once either, that's every year.
That's ELEVEN THOUSAND WOMEN! Eleven thousand lives that *haven't* been disrupted by unwanted pregnancy, because they were relying on a more effective form of contraception. If they hadn't used any contraception at all? 69700 unwanted foetuses PER YEAR. This is what happens when you put people off using safe contraceptives with idiotic scare tactics.
Yes, these women "thought they were 99% safe" - based on the number of women who have actually had Implanon fitted, they were actually 99.94% safe (equivalent to one in about 2000, vs. one in 100). I'm sure it's not much of a comfort to the women who have experienced a failure (after all, on an individual level it's no longer a statistic - you're either pregnant or you're not), and of course it would have been wonderful if they could have been 100% 'safe', but compared to around 70,000 of those same women each year who would have been pregnant if they had no contraception, that's a vanishingly small number.
It's not perfect. No method of contraception is perfect, and not everyone gets on with hormone based contraception, but it's by far the best out there. And it makes me sick with anger that scare tactics like these stupid headlines are being used to trash what is clearly the most reliable means we have of preventing unwanted pregnancy.
What's the real agenda here? I have no idea. Maybe some crazy idea that that declaring contraception 'unsafe' will put teenage girls off from having sex? Maybe a complete lack of understanding of statistics. Perhaps a misunderstanding of how contraception really works - and a belief that there's a better method out there? Currently, there isn't a better option - unless you combine several at once, eg. condoms *and* an implant, or a coil, or or whatever (and of course, implants and coils don't protect from STIs, so that's an excellent idea anyway). Sadly real science doesn't give us perfect answers, it just gives us better ones. And they're getting better all the time - or they would be, if only journalists would actually understand the information they're presented with.
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Additional information:
If you have an implant and you're worried if it might be incorrectly fitted:
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Update two:
There's some more decent information at these sites (though many of them still fail to compare with failure rates for other contraceptives):
http://bishuk.com/2011/01/06/contraceptive-implant/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2011/01/contraceptive-failure-figures.shtml
http://dianthus.co.uk/implanon-and-contraceptive-failures
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/01January/Pages/info-implanon-contraceptive-implant.aspx
So what's wrong with it?
Here's the headline: "Failure of contraceptive implants sets back battle against teen pregnancies"
and the subtitle: "Bad press surrounding 584 cases in which women trusting in Implanon implants fell pregnant is a blow to family-planning advisers"
Terrifying - 584 failures - that's got to be bad, right? Well, no.
Why not?
Because statistically, that number of 584 failures makes Implanon an AMAZINGLY EFFECTIVE contraceptive.
Let's take a look at a table of statistics about contraception - I've taken my stats from here
Type of contraception |
Implanon Hormone Implant: 0.05% failure rate. |
Condom: 2-15% failure rate. |
Crossed Fingers (no contraception): 85% failure rate. |
Number of women expected to become pregnant during one year (out of 100) |
0.05 |
2 to 15 |
Around 85 |
Number of women expected to become pregnant during one year (out of 82,000) |
41 |
1640 to 12,300 |
Around 69,700 |
Number of women likely to become pregnant over 11 years (out of estimated 1,000,000) |
584* |
20,000 to 150,000** |
Around 850,000** |
- |
|||
*actual statistic | |||
**this is a low estimate - stats are based on only one year of use. |
Contraception failure rates are measured by the number of women out of 100 who would get pregnant over a year using that contraceptive. So as you can see above, using no contraception at all, 85% of women WOULD get pregnant. Condoms have between a 2 and 15% failure rate. That means between two and 15 women will pregnant over a year whilst relying on condoms for contraception. So if 82,000 women were using condoms for contraceptive protection for a year, between 1640 and 12300 of those women would get pregnant.
So let's just compare those condom statistics back to the headline: We are told in the article that 82,000 women per year are fitted with an Implanon implant. Compared to condoms, 584 failures out of 82,000 women is very low - far less than 1%.
But that's not the end of the story.
It's not the end of the story because the 584 pregnancies they're talking about in this article weren't over one year. They were over ELEVEN YEARS. We're talking about barely one twentieth of a percent, 0.06%.
If all of these women had used condoms instead, we'd be looking at an extra 11,716 women who would likely be pregnant due to contraceptive failure - not just once either, that's every year.
That's ELEVEN THOUSAND WOMEN! Eleven thousand lives that *haven't* been disrupted by unwanted pregnancy, because they were relying on a more effective form of contraception. If they hadn't used any contraception at all? 69700 unwanted foetuses PER YEAR. This is what happens when you put people off using safe contraceptives with idiotic scare tactics.
Yes, these women "thought they were 99% safe" - based on the number of women who have actually had Implanon fitted, they were actually 99.94% safe (equivalent to one in about 2000, vs. one in 100). I'm sure it's not much of a comfort to the women who have experienced a failure (after all, on an individual level it's no longer a statistic - you're either pregnant or you're not), and of course it would have been wonderful if they could have been 100% 'safe', but compared to around 70,000 of those same women each year who would have been pregnant if they had no contraception, that's a vanishingly small number.
It's not perfect. No method of contraception is perfect, and not everyone gets on with hormone based contraception, but it's by far the best out there. And it makes me sick with anger that scare tactics like these stupid headlines are being used to trash what is clearly the most reliable means we have of preventing unwanted pregnancy.
What's the real agenda here? I have no idea. Maybe some crazy idea that that declaring contraception 'unsafe' will put teenage girls off from having sex? Maybe a complete lack of understanding of statistics. Perhaps a misunderstanding of how contraception really works - and a belief that there's a better method out there? Currently, there isn't a better option - unless you combine several at once, eg. condoms *and* an implant, or a coil, or or whatever (and of course, implants and coils don't protect from STIs, so that's an excellent idea anyway). Sadly real science doesn't give us perfect answers, it just gives us better ones. And they're getting better all the time - or they would be, if only journalists would actually understand the information they're presented with.
- - - - -
Additional information:
If you have an implant and you're worried if it might be incorrectly fitted:
--from Dr. Petra Boynton's blog entry, Contraceptive Implants and Media Panics – what you need to know (click for more details)
What to do if you are worried?
If you are already using the Contraceptive Implant and are not experiencing any problems you probably don’t need to worry. However if this coverage has concerned you then you can speak to your GP, Reproductive Health Clinic or call the Family Planning Association (in the UK) on 0845 122 8690.
Remember this form of contraception is more than 99% effective and for the majority of women who opt to use it they experience no problems and are happy with it as their contraceptive choice.
- - - - -
Update two:
There's some more decent information at these sites (though many of them still fail to compare with failure rates for other contraceptives):
http://bishuk.com/2011/01/06/contraceptive-implant/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2011/01/contraceptive-failure-figures.shtml
http://dianthus.co.uk/implanon-and-contraceptive-failures
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/01January/Pages/info-implanon-contraceptive-implant.aspx