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Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

readytogroove.com

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Re: Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

#41

Post by ejstronge »

MaxGabriel wrote: post #11
dbla wrote: post #6

I'm a little bit confused. The title mentions birth control but the website is talking mostly about fertility. Is this a tool to help women get pregnant or prevent pregnancy?

Apparently both. On this page http://www.readytogroove.com/app/ , it explains how you can learn which days you are or are not fertile. Is this really a reliable birth control method though?

I think jaidoretta's comment is a bit too optimistic about fertility-awareness methods.

The CDC has an information sheet about the effectiveness of different methods of contraception[1] which cite on the order of 18 pregnancies a year for these methods. Interestingly, newer fertility-awareness methods appear to be more effective than this estimate[2].

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/UnintendedPregnancy/PD...

[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0015028204...

Re: Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

#42

Post by ntaso »

sounds wrote: post #40
nsxwolf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't find secular versions of NFP because the hormonal birth control and sterilization industry created what they felt was the perfect no muss, no fuss solution, and couldn't imagine why anyone but the "religious crazies" could possibly want an alternative to it. You can thank the religious people for continuing to develop the science over the decades when the world went absolutely bananas for the pill.

So if I'm understanding you right, industry as a whole chose a method which though it has benefits also has drawbacks – so much so that they ignored research? And it was religious people who continued fundamental research? Very interesting! And not what I've seen in other cases. I'm happy to have my stereotypes challenged.

He's at least partly right. Most studies in this area are directly or indirectly sponsored by the church. This doesn't make the sympto-thermal method a religious thing and the studies are still scientific, but the church was one of the few who gave financial aid.

Thing is, the method can be done on a piece of paper. So far, not many people had commercial interest in further research. The few who had, used their finances to build birth-control monitors (a piece of hardware) and tied their studies to their specific products.

So, yeah, the church definitely put money in it whereas not many corporations or investors did.

Re: Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

#43

Post by nsxwolf »

sounds wrote: post #40
nsxwolf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't find secular versions of NFP because the hormonal birth control and sterilization industry created what they felt was the perfect no muss, no fuss solution, and couldn't imagine why anyone but the "religious crazies" could possibly want an alternative to it. You can thank the religious people for continuing to develop the science over the decades when the world went absolutely bananas for the pill.

So if I'm understanding you right, industry as a whole chose a method which though it has benefits also has drawbacks – so much so that they ignored research? And it was religious people who continued fundamental research? Very interesting! And not what I've seen in other cases. I'm happy to have my stereotypes challenged.

And I don't want to discount the secular contributions to the research, because they have been there the whole time.

But especially in the Catholic church, after Humanae Vitae, there was a lot of motivation to be able to offer an acceptable alternative to contraception.

I'm glad this is becoming more popular in secular circles. I always figured it would, given how health conscious people have become. Women don't want to eat GMOs or gluten, but are just fine with taking hormones that shut down a major component of the body?

Re: Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

#44

Post by servowire »

Albeit a great app, this method is less reliable than having proper birth control at hand.

I see mentions of "But it's 1.8% failure rate!" - thing about Cumulative Probability is, that is a pretty high number of failure after about 10 years.

After 10 years you have a Cumulative Probability: P(X = 1) of about 15% of getting pregnant.

If you don't want to be a dad/mom - use a condom. Or go double dutch.

Re: Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

#45

Post by ntaso »

servowire wrote: post #44

Albeit a great app, this method is less reliable than having proper birth control at hand. I see mentions of "But it's 1.8% failure rate!" - thing about Cumulative Probability is, that is a pretty high number of failure after about 10 years. After 10 years you have a Cumulative Probability: P(X = 1) of about 15% of getting pregnant. If you don't want to be a dad/mom - use a condom. Or go double dutch.

Your argument lacks on two levels:

1. The same logic must be applied to condoms. They have a failure rate of 0.6 - 12% per year, depending on the study.

2. You mix perfect-use with imperfect-use. Even sterilization doesn't have a 0% failure rate, because sometimes things don't work out properly. The perfect-use index of sterilization should be 100% safety, but in reality, it's 99.9% I think.

Re: Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

#46

Post by dsr_ »

jaldoretta wrote: post #29
dsr_ wrote: post #23

Q: What do you call a woman who depends on the rhythm method for birth control? A: A mother. As a tool to help you get pregnant, awesome, kudos, very well done. Promoting it for birth control? Not very clever. http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control...

It's a common misconception that the method our app relies on is the same as the rhythm method, which it is NOT. The rhythm method predicts fertility based on cycle length, which is a really BAD idea. The sympto-thermal method pinpoints the fertile window using scientifically-backed signs of fertility. Planned Parenthood lists an effectiveness of 99.6% (see the "What is the Sympto-thermal Method" section: http://www.…

I apologize for conflating the rhythm method and the sympto-thermal method.

It's still a bad idea for most people.

All from the same Planned Parenthood site:

Twenty-four out of every 100 couples who use fertility awareness-based methods each year will have a pregnancy if they don't always use the method correctly or consistently.

whereas:

Vasectomy is the most effective birth control for men. It is nearly 100 percent effective.

and

Less than 1 out of 100 women will get pregnant each year if they use an IUD.

---

I want to control my systems. I have many choices: Puppet, Chef, cfengine, writing my own system... you're offering me a system that requires maintenance every single day, I can't pay someone else to do it for me, and if I screw up, it's 76% likely that I won't have unintended consequences. But there are a bunch of other systems on the market where I configure them once and they work for years without attention, and even systems where I just have to be picky when I'm conducting operations, not every single day.

Re: Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

#47

Post by burgeralarm »

servowire wrote: post #44

Albeit a great app, this method is less reliable than having proper birth control at hand. I see mentions of "But it's 1.8% failure rate!" - thing about Cumulative Probability is, that is a pretty high number of failure after about 10 years. After 10 years you have a Cumulative Probability: P(X = 1) of about 15% of getting pregnant. If you don't want to be a dad/mom - use a condom. Or go double dutch.

Fortunately, probabilities for birth control methods aren't presented in this way. Generally, when an organization like Planned Parenthood says that the symptothermal method is 99.6% effective, what they really mean is:

"Of 100 couples who use the symptothermal method correctly for one year, 0.4 (fewer than one) will have a pregnancy." (Source: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control...)

So after about 100 years of using this method, you've got a .4% chance of becoming pregnant. Seems like decent odds to me.

Re: Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

#48

Post by rdudek »

jaldoretta wrote: post #39

For everyone wondering about this method, it's called the sympto-thermal method and is not the same as the rhythm method. Planned Parenthood lists it as 99.6% effective with perfect use. See the "What is the Sympto-thermal Method" section in the link below: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control...

It's pretty spot on. My wife did this so we could avoid pregnancy for first few years of our marriage, and once we decided to try for one, only took one month for her to get pregnant.

Re: Show HN: Birth Control As A Service

#50

Post by jaldoretta »

ejstronge wrote: post #41
MaxGabriel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently both. On this page http://www.readytogroove.com/app/ , it explains how you can learn which days you are or are not fertile. Is this really a reliable birth control method though?

I think jaidoretta's comment is a bit too optimistic about fertility-awareness methods. The CDC has an information sheet about the effectiveness of different methods of contraception[1] which cite on the order of 18 pregnancies a year for these methods. Interestingly, newer fertility-awareness methods appear to be more effective than this estimate[2]. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/UnintendedPregnancy/PD..…

The effectiveness of the sympto-thermal method (STM), like other methods, obviously depends on a number of factors. One of the big problems is that fertility awareness-based methods are a whole category of methods, which also includes the rhythm method and others that are much less effective that STM.
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