Inertia, what if the form of contraception solely eliminated teen pregnancy?
I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.
Oh BTW, I cut & pasted that quote above and am in no way responsible for the spelling errors contained therein. And I didn’t specify it was a quote because I wanted to freak some (non-Kubrick loving) people out into thinking that I was actually saying that in response to the OP.
Actually, I got the quote from a pretty cool Dr. Strangelove site if anyone’s interested: http://www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick/films/strangelove/
P.S. I’ll send the webmaster a quick note on their spelling mistake.
Sorry I wasn’t around to answer questions some had with the OP. Yes, of course, estrogen in the water supply wouldn’t work. We’re talking about some hypothetical new breakthough, as effective on males as females, virtually no side-effects. Its effects are eliminated as simply as drinking water that doesn’t contain the drug for a few days, and that water is readily available to anyone who seeks it in order to have children.
As Gilligan put it, We turn the default state of society fertility from on to off.
Inertia, I was intrigued by your point. Unintended pregnancy maybe not only isn’t a bad thing for society, it may be a necessary thing. Interesting.
“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi
Sorry. 'Twas my feeble attempt at humor since the OP made me think about what Base Commander Ripper from Dr. Strangelove would have thought about Milo’s idea. The bit of selective quoting from Otto’s post was just to reinforce the paranoid flavor of the post. It was my bad for not using the universal tongue-in-cheek symbol 
And since I’m so woefully off-topic (again, I apologize) I’d like to say that the site I
gave a link for above is GREAT if your a Kubrick fan. It’s not just Dr.
Strangelove…Check out: http://www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick/
Who knows, with all the advances in our knowledge of the human genome recently, such a thing might not be hypothetical. (Total WAG, as I know nothing of genetics)
It seems that there might be some gene sequence, common in both sexes, that could turn off the body’s ability to create sperm/eggs without affecting normal sexual functions. Just think, women wouldn’t have to menstruate and have PMS. WooooHooooo!!! And we could screw like bunny rabbits without ever worrying about the consequences. WoooooooooooooooooooooHooooooooooooooooooo!!!
(Once we nip that whole AIDS thing in the bud that is) 
Otto wrote:
When a study says that a particular form of birth control is “90% effective”, it does not mean that each time you have sex using that form of birth control you have a 10% chance of getting pregnant. Nor does it mean that you have a 10% chance of the birth control “totally failing” and protecting you no better than using no birth control at all.
What “90% effective” means is that, over the course of having regular sex for one year, you have a 90% chance of not getting pregnant if you use that form of birth control.
Incidentally, according to the stats on a box of Reality brand female condoms, using no protection at all is “11% effective” as a form of birth control.
How easily would the drug be removable from water? That is, would cooking neutralize it? Seems to me that it would mean anyone wanting a child could no longer eat prepared foods, go to restaurants, eat at a friend’s house, etc, because of the water used in preparation, used in soda, etc.
Also…um… in this age of such deadly things as AIDS do you really want to give teens a reason to start having more sex? A false sense of security because they can’t get pregnant?
–
I have over 2000 posts, dammit! Show some respect.
http://fathom.org/opalcat/showmerespect.jpg
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
inertia
Water supplies are not closed systems. Water enters into them from outside and leaves them. This chemical would get into the broader water supply. It would not be stopped by borders, which raises another implication as to how other locales would react to what could be termed chemical warfare.
Surgoshan
No, I just want them dead.
tracer
I understand, I was just phrasing it that way for, well, I dunno, it seemed like a legit way to make the point. I didn’t mean to imply that one pregnancy would result in every ten acts of condomed heterosexual intercourse amongst fertile people.
Really? At a 90% effectiveness level, 64% of all girls having sex would get through high school without getting pregnant. That seems pretty darn low to me.
That hardly follows. In many cases, if a couple hadn’t had an unplanned pregnancy, they would have had a planned pregnancy later on.
I’m not a statistician. Can you explain how a 90% effectiveness rate translates into a 36% failure rate?
Assuming tracer is correct (and his definition does sound right), the probability of an event with a 90% probibility happening four times in a row (that is, a girl doesn’t get pregnant for four years in a row) is .9^4=.81^2~=.64
You know, you really only need a drug causing contraception in just one gender (of course, not allowing side effects limits this, but hey). Think about it: you need two fertile genders to make a baby. Neutralize one and you’ve done it.
I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.
I don’t know what ^ means in the above equation. Can the equation be expressed in words for us non-math types? If I’m reading it correctly, the equation presumes that all girls who become heterosexually active in high school will do so freshman year? All girls who become heterosexually active don’t do so freshman year, so the equation would have to be adjusted to reflect that.
I guess my next question would be, what is the definition of “effective”? Are there stats available on the pregnancy rate of people who use no birth control at all? Someone posted 11% before, does that seem accurate? Accepting 11% and 64% as accurate, is it reasonable to define a birth control method which by itself halves the likelihood of pregnancy as “effective”?
Otto, the ^ means “to the power of.”
The idea is that for sexually active women who are on the pill, 90 percent will not become pregnant in one year and 10 percent will. (Of course this is oversimplified because there’s no taking into account factors like how often the women are having sex.)
Say that 1000 highschool freshwomen start having sex and are on the pill. At the end of one year, the statistics indicate that 100 of them will have become pregnant and 900 won’t. By the end of the sophomore year, 10 percent of the 900 (90) will have become pregnant and 810 won’t. By the end of the Junior year, 81 will have, and 729 won’t. By the end of the senior year, 72.9 (all right, 73) will and 656 won’t. Then out of the original 1000, 344 will have gotten pregnant by the end of the 4 years.
Dang statistics.
Another response to the original OP - pure Darwinism seems to indicate that a species needs as wide a gene pool as possible in order to adapt to future environmental changes. It wouldn’t be a good idea to do too much artificial selection.
Not quite. From my point of view, statements about the probability of an event occuring during high school don’t apply except to people that haven’t started high school yet. The condition of “having sex” would therefore be evaluated just before a girl enters high school, and my calculations would not apply to any girl who is not having sex (and continues to have sex) before high school.
Oops, instead of the pill I meant condoms, of course. The pill has a much lower failure rate than 10%.
–Milossarian
If such a breakthrough happened, I think just taking the drug voluntarily would suffice.
I mean, if taking the drug was as easy as drinking water, what kind of idiot would not take it? I’d bet even crack whores would take to drug. In fact, I’d bet they’d even pay to take such a wonderful drug.
Also, since it would be feasible for the drug to be put in the water supply, it must be rather cheap, dirt cheap.
I’m just saying that such a miracle drug would be very popular, so the need to force it would be moot.
There’s always another beer.
I think you’re underestimating the amount of “ignernce” out there, Beeruser.
But there would be some uneasy ethical situations with this. For example, for the breeders who aren’t intelligent enough to understand the concept, how can they be expected to understand they can reverse it by drinking the parental water supply?
If you can’t make them understand that, it would be tantamount to castration or sterilization of “undesirables,” and that’s a slippery slope I’d never want to start down.
“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi
Oh, and Surgoshan
I think it would still be desirable to have the hypothetical drug neutralize fertility in both sexes. If it only affects women, fertile men could never be certain that their female partners were drinking the water. Strongly likely, yes, but not certain.
With it affecting both sexes, you personally have a choice as to your fertility, it’s made as easy as possible and you aren’t reliant on the good word of your partner.
“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi
To clarify my earlier post, I have two sons, and have no plans to have more children. Had I been blessed with a girl, she would be on depro shots as soon as I saw her look at boys.
My doctor told me about condoms being ‘not effective’ because I wa using them regularly as my only means of birth control. For a once in a while thing, I would risk it, but if you are having sex more than once or twice a year, you are playing the odds. The ‘good’ statistics about condoms need to be taken with a grain of salt. The health departments WANT us to wear them, rightly so, to prevent disease. Girls on the pill dont always use one because they are ‘protected’… thus the health professionals want us to use condoms as actual ‘birth control’ when really, their place is as disease prevention.
This conversation with my doctor began because I was late, very, very, very late, then had a horrible period. My hypothesis was, and still is, is that I miscarried. After this I went on the depro shots. I still use condoms too.
So, while I am a fanatical supporter of condoms… I support birth control as its companion.