Women are scared of taking the birth control pill, even though it can safeguard them from deadly cancers and diseases, said a researcher who calls the pill's health benefits "one of the best kept secrets in America."
Reports on the pill's adverse effects have left women with "a lopsided perspective on pill safety," said Dr. David Grimes, vice chairman of the Department of Obstetrics/-Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California at San Francisco.Women who take the pill for a decade or longer reduce their chances of getting ovarian cancer - the most deadly gynecologic cancer in the United States - by about 80 percent, Grimes said.
And the risks decrease the longer the pill is taken, with protection lasting at least 15 years after a woman goes off the pill, said Grimes, who spoke at the American Medical Association's Science Reporters Conference.
About 11,000 women die of ovarian cancer each year in the United States, according to Dr. Charles Drescher, a physician at Swedish Hospital Medical Center in Seattle and an associate professor at the University of Washington.
Oral contraceptives also safeguard women against endometrial cancer, the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States, reducing the risk by as much as 50 percent, particularly for high-risk women, Grimes said.
This comes as no surprise to the medical community.
"None of that is particularly new - it's been demonstrated in previous reports," Drescher said.
But there is a lingering fear, based on 10- to 20-year-old research, that the pill will increase a woman's chance of developing breast cancer or blood clots, said Dr. Benjamin Greer, director of the gynecological oncology division at the University of Washington's School of Medicine.
More recent research has shown that is not the case. Research showing the pill to be beneficial to women's health is "entirely contrary to the view held by most American women," Grimes said. There is "gross misinformation and gross confusion about oral contraceptives."