Subject: Re: botanical birth control

From: [email-masked] (Steve Dyer)
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 18:44:39 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Camilla Cracchiolo <[email-masked]> wrote:
   >jpgossett ([email-masked]) wrote:
   >: Wild yam will do the job nicely without any side effects.  
   >: Simply take six or so 500 mg capsules of a good concentration 
   >: like what you get from Enrich Intl. per day.  Allow about a 
   >: month before you consider it safe. 
   >
   >I sincerely hope that no one relies on unsupported anecdotes for birth 
   >control.  I'd be suspicious of a post that doesn't even post 
   >effectiveness statistics or studies.  In the case of wild yam, there is 
   >*no* reason to believe that it is any more effective for contraception 
   >than eating cholesterol laden food.

I hope the women who get pregnant as a result of trusting jpgossett's
nonsense will consider naming their kid after him.  The only way a
Mexican yam is going to act as a contraceptive is if the woman uses it,
whole, as a pessary.

The reason why mexican yams are being pushed (completely without basis)
in the "alternative" subculture as contraceptives and hormonal replacements
is a fascinating story, and it has nothing to do with anything "alternative".

In the late 40's Carl Djerassi and a few colleagues formed Syntex,
a chemical firm, and based it in Mexico.  Their area of research
was steroid chemistry--at the time, the synthesis of steroid hormones
was not well developed, and producing large quantities of them was
virtually impossible.  Djerassi found that the Mexican wild yam, an inedible
plant, was an very good source of compounds with a sterol nucleus,
chemicals which could be used as the raw material for chemical manipulation
to produce steroid hormones.  The primary compound in wild yams is
diosgenin.  It has absolutely NO hormonal effects, nor is it processed
by the body to produce metabolites which are active as hormones.  However,
ingenious chemists that they were, the folks at Syntex were able to
produce a wide variety of hormonally active steroids from this inactive raw
material.  The most notable one, and the one which ultimately gained
Djerassi his notoriety, was the synthesis of norethindrone, an orally
active analogue of progesterone which formed the basis of the first
birth control pills, and which is still used today.

Trying to sell Mexican yam as a contraceptive is like trying to sell
a ton of iron ore as an automobile.  I'm sure a few people might get
taken in by this, but we wouldn't exactly call such people smart.
Gnu Age hucksters and herbalists seem to have picked on on the yam/hormone
connection but have missed a few essential points, and they sell such
crap to people who are ignorant of what they're buying.

I highly recommend Djerassi's autobiography for anyone interested
in the story of the wild yam and contraception.  I picked it up and
couldn't put it down.

        AUTHOR: Djerassi, Carl.
         TITLE: The pill, pygmy chimps, and Degas' horse : the autobiography of
                  Carl Djerassi.
     PUB. INFO: New York : BasicBooks, c1992.
   DESCRIPTION: viii, 319 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

-- 
Steve Dyer
[email-masked]