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Contraceptive App Natural Cycles Blamed For String of Unwanted Pregnancies (standard.co.uk)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A contraceptive mobile phone app used by tens of thousands of British women has come under fire after reportedly sparking a string of unwanted pregnancies. Swedish birth control app Natural Cycles, which costs $55, tracks body temperature to accurately predict when in the month a woman is more likely to fall pregnant. The period monitor was hailed as a non-mood altering alternative to the pill and, if used perfectly, was found to be 99 per cent effective by researchers. But the app has come under fire after the Sodersjukhuset hospital in Stockholm lodged a complaint with the Swedish Medical Products Agency, the country's government body responsible for regulation of medical devices. It claimed staff at the hospital had recorded 37 women who had fallen pregnant in the last quarter of 2017 after using the app. One midwife said the hospital had a duty to report all side effects.
Swedes get burned by marketing. Who would have thought an unverifiable, exceptional claim of 99% efficacy for what's basically a fancy rhythm method, also known as "safe days", wouldn't pan out like they said?
Lucky that abortions are free in Sweden.
So, you'd expect that if at least 3700 women used it. ...Ignoring every other aspect of why it's stupid to count on this if you didn't want to get pregnant, anyway.
A pregnancy is a hell of a side effect of a birth control method.
www.christopherlewis.com
The "less likely" time of the month does not mean probability == 0.0.
There is still a probability greater than zero during the "less likely" time. And that positive probability may be significantly higher than other methods of birth control.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Do you know what they call couples that use the rhythm method for birth control?
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Parents
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"I was ovulating and was totally horny and had to get some and my boyfriend didn't pull out fast enough, so the app didn't REALLY work for me."
Or maybe the whole, "I cut it too close to my ovulation time and my man's sperm must've been really hardy. It's the app's fault for not knowing that," possibility?
In the end, there is no non-artificial, bulletproof method of birth control that works for everyone that is sexually active because there are way too many variables.
What can I say. That's fucked up.
#DeleteFacebook
people are why we can't have nice things. cull the herd.
"One mistake, and you'll provide support for a lifetime."
is that this results in stupid people having babies.
Idocracy was not supposed to be a documentary.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
Nelson Muntz would like to have a hyphenated word with anyone that believed a smartphone app was a functional method of contraception.
>> contraceptive mobile phone app...has come under fire after reportedly sparking a string of unwanted pregnancies.
Really, that's not where the phone goes, ladies.
There's a special, scientific term for women who use the rhythm method of birth control. They're called 'mothers'.
- Necron69
You Naturally end up with a family, no matter what you're planning.
- Father of 3 kids, born within 40 months of one another.
If the pregnancy is unwanted, then terminate the pregnancy. A recently-fertilized egg is not the same thing as a human life. If the mother chooses not to terminate the pregnancy, then this whole thing about the app is a non-issue.
Birth Control. And it didn't work back then. We wouldn't have put research into chemicals if this was 100% effective.
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One, Two, Three...Infinity
but....appz!
As Robert Heinlein once observed, the medical term for women who use the rhythm method is "mother."
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Creimertard. Mod down.
The Google Play Store pages mentions between 100'000 and 500'000 installs, and there are around 6'000 evaluation.
As it's a method with a non-zero failure rate, and given the significantly huge number of women using it, *pregnancy are bound to happen*.
Duh.
(Also note that the 99% is if the method is used always perfectly. Actual real-world result are going to be worse due to mis-use)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I don't think it was the app that can be blamed for the pregnancies.
I redirect vagina.women.sex to 127.0.0.1 and solve these problems for all devices on my network. Problem solved.
I suspect that the 99% figure is the complement of the Pearl score (i.e.: a pearl score of 1%).
i.e.: if 100 women use it (perfectly) after 1 year you'll witness 1 pregnancy.
Now imagine :
- The users aren't applying the method perfectly (actual real-world pearl score is higher).
- According to the Google Play Store page, there are WAY more than 100 women using it.
So you're bound to see quite a few pregnancies.
That's why, in the medical field, when you DEFINITELY want to see NO pregnancies (e.g.: because a female patient is on a medical treatment that happens to be horribly teratogenic), you always advise the patient to combine *TWO* different(*) contraception methods.
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(*), No putting two condoms doesn't count. And is actually a pretty stupid idea (hint word: rubbing).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The app claims a 93% prevention rate, right? Is this hospital reporting something different?
The pill and condoms are nowhere near.
When used together, they are very close to perfect.
There's a reason why the current advices given by doctors (e.g.: because the girl is on a teratogenic medication) is to combine TWO contraceptive.
If one fails (e.g.: condom badly handled ends up torn), chances are low that the second fails at the exact same time (e.g.: forgotten pill).
The only 100% ones I know of are abstinence ....
Hahaha.... very funny.
We're a specie that got where we are currently mostly by sexual reproduction. We have strong instinct inciting us to do it (those who weren't interested in sex, didn't reproduce and where removed from the gene pool). We actually are getting around quite a lot (we're tropical-originating animals, we do it all year long, compared to other animals that only have fixed mating seasons).
Good luck hoping that with all the above, humans will successfully restrain themselves to do what they were basically build for.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
its a swedish company and pay swedish tax's - a good thing
their thermometer is incredibly basic for what they claim to be doing and I'm going to guess the calibration is non existent or outsourced to china.
They do not seem to provide any information on the thermometer supplier I would have thought it was at least like the nokia and bluetooth...
regards
John Jones
p.s. poor harry
a Mother. (No, I didn't make this up, it's an old, old saying.)
Who thought this was a viable birth control method? Some things work great in theory, but in practice they are not so effective. This one is known to be ineffective from centuries of it failing to work though often tried.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I know it's a lot harder (there's a dirty joke in there somewhere) but still, you'd think there'd be enough demand. I worked shit jobs for a long time and I couldn't tell you how many dads weren't ready to be dads and would have killed for better / more reliable options.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Getting to hear what a bunch of Slashdotters think about natural planning ... is like asking Kalahari bushmen what stocks to short this week.
Or something.
Sure a kid costs hundreds of thousands of dollars over a life time, but you'd hope that they can get their 55$ back...
Using an app to not get stuck with an 18 year disease. People really this lazy?
Chris, you've never been close to getting a woman pregnant. The closest you've come to causing morning sickness is making a woman nauseous when she realized you're looking at her.
I don't have a witty follow-up
Why are people getting stupider and stupider?????
"37 Swedish Women Learn About Statistics For The First Time".
I once had a friend and colleague who would point out the window and ask "does *that* look like 30% chance of rain to you?!" Not sure whether he ever planned to start a family or not, but my guess is he's ripe for an "accident".
If more white women get pregnant that might slow down the replacement of native swedes by arabs.
Until there's an rape app for arabs that determines "when is that white kafir bitch ovulating" so now is a good time for a hearty raping.
Which will of course, offset any native cultural breeding efforts.
As a person who used to build software under the different global health regulations (think the FDA in the USA) - I totally understand this. Sounds situation normal.
First - 99% had to be proven during pre-market. Actual - 37 women out of how many using the app?
All hospitals are supposed to report back to the vendor and FDA any issues. Later on "actual vs expected" is compared and the 99% claim will be reevaluated. In the USA the vendor is responsible for deciding when to change this (although the FDA can force the issue during inspection).
1% is a big number when there's a million people using the app. Chip makers like 5 nines for this reason - failure is not an option. Geez - failure is a baby?
That there is essentially no difference between a fetus and a baby is demonstrably false. A baby is an independent organism. A fetus not only depends on the mother for basic biological functions like respiration, but a fetus's metabolic rate also matches the mother's. In terms of consciousness, that doesn't even begin until the third trimester.
I think it is very easy to distinguish that a peanut size six week old fetus is different than a 6 pound screaming baby. The time in between those extremes has a lot of nuance and is more difficult for a lay person to understand, but people simply need to put in the effort if they wish to understand the issue.
There is ethical issue with an abortion before 16 weeks. And arguably this can be extended out to 26 weeks, as the science strongly supports this. People may personally have issues with any kind of abortion, but your personal beliefs aren't the same as ethics and therefor your personal beliefs should not be applied to everyone universally.
All it does is mess a little with Google maps directions to get women to fall down stairs and other such obstacles.
Too lazy to walk? A single "turn right, now!" while driving can give you a little airbag action and fix that troublesome pregnancy you can't afford.
When the app installs just click the "abort" button on the pop up screen.
Just 60$!
Oh wait.. didn't Apple already have this functionality in their iPhone map app?
Oh well, I'll have to make my fortune another way.
I don't believe in the government trying to punish people for abortion
Then you're not pro-life.
That's 37 aborted pregnanices.
Captcha: trusty.
37... out of tens of thousands of women... that's less than 1%. 99% effective means 1% ineffective, which means for every 10,000 women using the app, 100 can expect to get pregnant. For birth control pills (99.9% effective if used properly), that would be 10 out of every 10,000. Seems to me it the app is living up to its claims.
The problem with this is that the data doesn't include if the app is being used as directed... like same time every day, limited alcohol, regular sleep schedule, not sitting or standing up before taking the temp, not peeing in the middle of the night... If used correctly I fully believe in this app but a lot of people can't even take a pill same time every day so its not shocking there are people blaming this app when its more likely they aren't following the massive amount of rules to be able to use this app effectively.
This is a skewed article that is more attributed to human error than machine error. Then again, as someone who uses this app, I have to accept that pregnancy may happen and be ok with it if it does, ie married and a kid wouldn't be a financial burden or a bad thing. I do think using it when you aren't at all prepared or ready for kids is pretty stupid because it does require a lot of work and a certain lifestyle to work correctly. If you are in a good place in your life a surprise baby would be something you would be ok with and be able to handle then this is actually a pretty cool thing to do to learn about yourself and get off controlled hormones. If not, don't risk it.
Be smart, educate yourself, learn about your body, and don't blindly put faith into an app or even a pill. Take responsibility for your own actions and education and be aware of the risks involved.
I have heard it said that doctors have a technical term for women who use the rhythm method: "mothers."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're holding it wrong. The woman should grip it between the upper thighs.
Alternatively the man can shove the phone down the front of his pants until it fries his Jacksons.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It just prints in box letters:
A B S T A I N !!!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Witness BitZtream getting pwned!... twice.....three times..... four times!
My girlfriend is younger and totally sucked into the idiot youtube vlogging thing, she follows dozens of people daily for their content, some good some bad.
Several of the loopier girls pushed this stupid app, over the past year and for fuck knows what reason, common sense went out the window, because hey "my favourite youtuber who did gender studies and art likes it!!" the videos reeked of pushed content (as most of them do, makeup, the youtubers books, gadgets, sex toys etc)
I said to her "this thing, is a fancy fucking version, of the rythm method, which I was taught in school, nearly 30 years ago, is a load of rubbish" suffice to say I won the argument.
God damn, I love youtube and a lot of the content (I paused a RedLetterMedia video to post this) but for goodness sake some of the crap these people claim and sadly the younger generation believe, kills me. Is common sense going to go entirely for the next couple of generations?
My wife and I were both virgins when we got married. Her cycles were kind of messed up. We used My Days to plot her menstrual cycles, intimate encounters, and what contraceptive method (if any) was used. Based on rolling averages, the app indicates which days she's more likely to get pregnant (even indicates the odds of a boy or girl child for a given day). We got pregnant the four times we wanted, and avoided pregnancy when we weren't ready to welcome an addition to our family. Being Christian, we don't believe in abortion except in extreme cases, but our sect allows for most birth control methods. After we got the desired number of kids, I tied my tubes. I admit we cheated by not following the calendar 100%, but we shored our odds by using a condom on high risk days. After the previous baby was old enough we'd have recreation sex (still using the app to maintain an accurate calendar), but didn't stress over whether we got pregnant. Not that I'm tied and enough time has lapsed sex is a recreational activity.
People who use NFP know the risks, and like every other method, NFP has a method and user effectiveness. Further, it relies on other factors such as the accuracy of the thermometer. And lets not forget that abortion is completely legal. In the end, this is a midwife pushing her agenda, not the mothers.
People ignorant enough to use the rhythm method get what they deserve. Use a REAL contraceptive or just pull out - those methods work very well.
Does anybody here have a hosts file that can prevent pregnancy...?
The app is a form of Natural Birth Control. Contraceptives fall into two broad categories, based on their effectiveness in real use versus the potential effectiveness with perfect use.
Natural Birth Control has a perfect use effectiveness of about five or fewer pregnancies per 1000 users (women only).
Natural Birth Control has a real use effectiveness of 24% of users experiencing pregnancy within the first year of use. That's a quarter of women becoming pregnant, folks.
That it's an app makes headlines in /., but really it's irrelevant that an app is used as an aid to a basal temperature method. The method doesn't work well, period. No British woman should expect otherwise.
Note: Data above from Health Canada
Natural methods have long tested at over 99% effective in research studies, however:
You have to have regular cycles (not perfectly regular, but you should have your period about every month or so).
You have to make the observations correctly.
You have to avoid unprotected sexual intercourse when fertile.
Apps eliminate human error from the fertility calculations, but there are still plenty of ways to mess it up.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
So what's the problem here? They report a 99% success rate. 1% failure with tens of thousands of users, you'd expect hundreds of pregnancies.
Which is exactly what's happened.
I'm missing the problem here.
People who use an app as contraception deserve to be punished. Period. (IYKWIM)
...is "mothers".
Has the earth been contaminated enough with hormones from contraception--looking at what is happening to some fish. Water systems cannot or do not filter out the hormones from contraception. Aren't you sick of your bodies being contaminated? Plus Natural Family Planning it is actually equal if not less likely to result in pregnancy than hormonal contraception. See the Creighton Model System. You also get to know your own body so if there should ever being problems you would know long before those contracepting. Your relationship with your spouse will soar rather than being another statistic because your relation will involve true intimacy.
... for two new apps: Just the Tip and Pullout. They are going to be hella disruptive.
I've already secured seed funding and the "next unicorn" whispers have already begun.
Look out Trojan, we're cuming for you.
I hope the midwife was being tongue in cheek with that response... It is kind of a primary effect if anything.
If would be like taking a drug to prevent you from giving you cancer, with a side effect of it giving you cancer...