Pill use 'affects partner choice'

[Demeter]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7558499.stm

The contraceptive pill could lead to women choosing the wrong partners, scientists believe. Researchers found that women chose different partners after taking the pill in tests on nearly 100 women. Women are thought to use smell to identify people with different immune systems and complementary genes. But the joint Liverpool and Newcastle universities' study suggested the pill disrupted this process, the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal said.


It could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odour perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners
Dr Craig Roberts, lead researcher

By passing on a wide-ranging set of immune system genes, couples increase their chances of having a healthy child that is not vulnerable to infection. Partners with different genes are also less likely to experience fertility problems or miscarriages. Women are naturally attracted to men with immune system genes different from their own because of their smell, experts believe. The major histocompatability complex cluster of genes which helps build proteins involved in the body's immune response is also known to influence smell signals called pheromones. It is this, experts believe, which leads women to use their sense of smell in helping to choose partners.

Results

Researchers asked nearly 100 women to sniff six male body odour samples and say which one they preferred. The test was carried out before and after the women had started taking the pill with very different results. The researchers suspect that the results were related to the way the pill simulates a state of pregnancy in women. Once pregnant, the need for a compatible partner for children recedes, they believe.

But lead researcher Dr Craig Roberts warned such changes could lead to problems.

"It could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odour perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners."

HIGHLY UNLIKELY, IMO!

[Hugin]

1. Interesting study.

I know it's anecdotal, but, in my younger years I had a couple of relationships go south after
my friends started with the pill. I also had a relationship begin after the pill was started which wasn't
originally a physical bond.

What made it odd was that these were mostly platonic at the time.

That's not to say it had anything to do with smell and may have had more to do with the hormones
used in the pills.

Interesting to consider.

[saracat]

2. Oh yeah, just another reason to oppose contraception as well as abortion!

Notice there isn't a companion statement about males abndoning their partners when they either start or stop "the pill". Males react to pheneromes as well. This is a "hit piece" and serves well as a companion piece to the Bush bill equating contaception and abortion.
A couple of years ago the Directior of our state ACLU told me that they would be going after contraception and taking unbeliable avenues to do so. I said she was wrong.I owe her an apology.

[Demeter]

3. Good Point!

There are so many things that can go wrong with a couple that changing smells, in this perfume-drenched society, seems the least likely.

[Hugin]

7. The key word to me is right at the top... The word 'wrong'.

IMO it should have maybe been 'different'.

[Igel]

4. Key word: "choose".

Ultimately, it's the woman's choice.

Whatever the man decides--whether a good choice or a bad choice--the woman nixes or affirms it. She's the final gatekeeper, so to speak. Pressure, coercion, harrassment, stalking, and rape are terms we use when the man makes the final choice. All are negative.

It's a trivial inference--just as it's a trivial inference that this should lead to some incremental rate in immunity or genetic defects, and that artificial unrelated scents probably wouldn't affect the process at all--that both men and women would have their perceptions altered, I think. Maybe not a fully valid one, but it looks probable. The other two inferences are probably more valid, and, to be honest, also unaddressed in the article. Or, in all likelihood, in the research proper.

Men and women may not be affected to the same extent--do hormonal alterations in the women lead to an alteration in their pheromone emissions, or just how they preceive men's? Ah, that's a question. Perhaps one that there's not an answer to at the present. Upon that would hinge how often men would "choose" wrong, and how they would break up. when the pill was discontinued.

However, it also raises questions for things like mid-life crises. How often is there a pheromone difference in the partners when they hit their late 30s or their 40s? Also a question not addressed. But most research, to be valid and rigorous, has to have narrow questions and methodologies.

Neither your focus and inferences seem merited, just suspicious. I doubt the researchers at Newcastle and Liverpool are trying to take away American women's birth control pills; we know nothing of their backgrounds. Pheromone research is on-going, and an interesting topic in its own right. Here we have a perfect experiment that provides, in all likelihood, a range of conditions for examining a single criterion, one that exists naturally and just requires monitoring, and one that probably wouldn't get past a research subject board if it was necessary to set up artificially. I think your "directior", if she was right, was right for reasons unrelated to this.

But, of course, it would be nice for the research to have some additional support before viewing it as too important.

[saracat]

5. Perhaps the researchers did not intend for it use as aginst contraception but it will be used thusly

I find the quote by you to be offensive but I hope you do not intend it as so

"Whatever the man decides--whether a good choice or a bad choice--the woman nixes or affirms it. She's the final gatekeeper, so to speak. Pressure, coercion, harrassment, stalking, and rape are terms we use when the man makes the final choice. All are negative."

You seem to be inferring that their is an equality between female choice and a male "raping , stalking, or harrassment.
When a women say "NO" in anyway it is a "choice" but the aforementioned acts you include are acts of violence. I do not know anyone who would equate them with either male or female choice. A male may say "No" to a female just as a feamle may refuse a male . He or she may also say "yes" that is a choice".

[jaybeat]

6. But in traditional, male-dominated cultures, that IS how it is portrayed

The whole idea that men can't help themselves, and that morality is all up to the woman, why women can't go out of the house without a male relative, or show a bit of uncovered ankle.

But, of course, in that context, the woman doesn't even get to use her sense of smell, or anything else, to make a choice, since it is usually made for her by her (male-dominated) family.

"But Daddy, I CAN'T marry Fred. He SMELLS bad!"

"I don't care HOW he smells! Fred's family's got an INSANE dowry!"

But even in the west, in pre-pill times, it was always the "girl" who was expected to put the brakes on--the "boy" was expected to go as far as she'd "let" him. Hence the notion that, if they do the deed but the female isn't choosing "yes," then it is forced or coerced and not OK. But never the idea that the male could or should choose who to potentially fertilize is not even on the radar--again, because his "animal urges" are beyond *his* control. That's why men need women to be the keepers of morality and fertility.

:puke:

[Demeter]

8. When I Consider How Many Unexamined Assumptions Underlie This Theory

I have to disregard the entire thing. This isn't science--it's more like astrology.

The first assumption: "Women are thought to use smell to identify people with different immune systems and complementary genes." No proof, no experimental evidence, no nothing. I choose men by voice, myself:the quality of their speech, their singing, accent, and what it is they are saying.
Even if their gene pool is full of toxic sludge, I might add. And this is without the Pill.

Assumption #2:"the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odour perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners" No data on role of pill discontinuation with breakups (if it were true, there would never be any planned pregnancies!)


No, this isn't science. Science isn't faith-based.