The Chemical News: "New Study Links Birth Control Pill to Brain Differences, but Don't Panic", "Breast Cancer Warning Tied To Hair Dye", "Hair Dyes and Straighteners May Raise Breast Cancer Risk for Black Women". Go ahead and panic.

The headlines counsel not to panic.

Well of course they do.

Panic is nature's way of getting you the heck of the way out of some terrible danger.  You are Captain Willard on an improbable mission into Camboida and the tiger comes through the jungle. . . you are in the velt when an African elephant spies you and charges full on aiming to squish you. . . you forgot to study for that exam that's scheduled 30 minutes from now.

Yes, panic.

And by panicking, concentrate your focus on that bad thing and avoid it.

But then, if you panic here, you may change your lifestyle in a truly revolutionary way that will be bad for somebody's pocketbook and may require you to make inconvenient life choices, opting for a natural, which doesn't just involve buying cabbage at the farmer's market.

Yup.

A long time ago on this blog, I posted a topic called We like everything to be natural . . . except for us.  That post, like a lot of posts here, was pretty wide ranging.  But part of what it noted was this:

 Chilean couple, 1940, no doubt a lot more natural than "all natural" folks today, in every sense.

In our world today, westerners (residents of Europe and North America) are huge on things being "all natural".  It's the rage, and it doesn't appear to be going away any time soon.  And I'm not really criticizing it, as my agrarian leanings make me sympathetic, when its done in the messy, bloody, muddy way of actual nature.  I'm not so sympathetic with the fanciful fake natural way that some who fear real nature would have it.

So, in this era of all natural, we have "natural" organic foods of all types.  Natural organic oatmeal (maybe even better if from Ireland and cut with steel), organic vegetables, grass fed beef.  You name it.

Indeed, entire sections of the European and North American populations are at war with any genetically altered foods of any kind, although it must be noted in fairness that nearly every food we eat was selectively bred that way so as to alter it from its original form, save for people who eat fairly primitive foods and hunt and fish.  Indeed, ironically for some of these folks, our meat sources tend to be much less genetically altered by selective breeding than our plant foods.  Cows, for example, differ little from aurochs.

 

Frequently satirical copied World War Two era poster.  Presenting an idealistic image, the mother and daughter in fact represent Americans who were a lot more "natural" than nearly any living today.

People have taken this one step further and now, in some hip circles, want their foods to be produced all locally.  Again, I'm not criticizing that.  I have some sympathy for it, being a fan of systems and realizing how odd some of our food production chain actually is.   I used to grow a big garden myself, and miss doing so, which sort of taps into this.

And we have all natural concerns expressing themselves in clothing.  I know of people who will only wear "all natural fibers".  Not liking synthetics much, I trend that way, although I do like the storm proof hoodies that are now out there, which make for great winter insulation.

Some folks, however, have gone even one step further there, and insist that their fibers, if plant derived, also be organic, out of an apparent concern for the environment.

All really big in Europe and North America, particularly with the upper class, the upper middle class, and the university crowd.

And then it went on to pose this question:

So why don't we apply it to ourselves?

And then it went on to address some of the very headlines addressed below, although some certainly weren't.

First, one that was:

New Study Links Birth Control Pill to Brain Differences, but Don't Panic

The news there actually isn't all that new in some ways actually.  Brain differences may not have been specifically previously noted, but what has been noted, scientifically, is that women's abilities in regards to mate choosing (it's hard to find a way to put this that doesn't sound odd) are significantly clouded if they're on the pill.

Now, what I don't mean is that women who are on the pill are less choosy about sex than women who are not.  They likely are.  While the risks associated with sex are there no matter what, rather obviously women who are at a higher risk of getting pregnant are no doubt a lot more careful than those who are not.

No, what I mean is that those who have studied it have said that women on the pill, for bio-psychological reasons that aren't well understood (but for which there may be a hint here) actually tend to choose men whom studies claim they'd frequently avoid if they weren't on the pill.

Again, while its really unpopular to say so, it's well known that sex impacts thought and psychologically women and men bond to each other upon having sex in a deeply psychological way.  One of the real fall outs from the sexual revolution that wasn't expected is the now fairly well demonstrated psychological wounding that casual sex has brought about.  People don't actually end up feeling "liberated" at all, but rather they become more animalistic with their behavior while feeling a deep sense of loss.  Like with so many other things, the old standards turn out to have a real basis beyond that which were imagined.

Anyhow, earlier studies found that women selecting long term mates while on the aforementioned pharmaceuticals often went in a different direction, the studies claimed, than they would have but for them.  As part of that, when off, there was the responding reaction of "what the @#$@#$ have I done here?" in some instances.

Anyhow, any time something changes in your brain due from what it would be in a state of nature is, in fact, a reason to panic.  That headline makes about as much sense as one stating "Smoking changes lungs. . .put don't panic."

This isn't, of course, the first concerning study on the pill, or more properly the pills.  Prior studies have pointed out increased health risks of all sorts, including cancer and strokes.  And this in turn makes the pill one of those pharmaceutical products which it is pretty clear the FDA wouldn't allow on the market today, if just introduced today, but which is due to our being both acclimated and societaly dependent on it.  There's as much chance of addressing it objectively as there would have been on objecting tobacco in Virginian in 1798.  Not going to happen.

So, "don't panic", is the advice you'll get.

And then there are these headlines:

Breast Cancer Warning Tied To Hair Dye

and;

Hair Dyes and Straighteners May Raise Breast Cancer Risk for Black Women

First, let's clear something up.  There are risk for white women, black women, Asian women, Latina women. The risk is to women.  The headline is deceptive.

There's a heightened risk however for black women.

We're not really certain why that is, but my guess is that it has to do with frequency of use rather than anything else.  It's not, of course, that other women, particularly white women, don't use hair products, but the marketing aimed at black women and white women are different as their hair is.  One of those difference is noted right in the headline.  White women don't often use hair straighteners.

African Americans have put up with a lot of hair abuse, it should be noted.  I don't know when it really got started but my guess is that it's a 20th Century thing.  Once African Americans moved into the cities in the Great Migration, they started to take up urban styles, for obvious reasons, and that meant taking up the urban hair styles of the day.  Both men and women were affected with this and one of the things that was affiliated upon them was hair straighteners.  African American men seem to have largely abandoned this in the 1960s, and I suspect that may be in part to conscription.  Nobody is going to mess with their hair too much if they're fighting in Vietnam, for example. I note that as during the 1960s African American men really abandoned this stuff en masse and have never taken it back up.  African American women did for awhile as well, but then at some later point, the late 80s or 90s, it became popular in their community for hair to be straightened and colored once again.

If there's any leveling factor in here at all, it's notable that, if anything, white women are really taking up messing with hair color in spades now and it's even spread to white men.  The pretty girl who looks like she's been in a tragic fishing tackle accident at Albertson's, for example, has lime green hair.  So that's going to be catching up with them as well.

All this fits into the unfortunate set of facts that women are uniquely afflicted with those who want to change how they look for no good reason.  Women look the way they're supposed to look without hair dies, hair straighteners or giant artificial lips or boobs.  Just stop it should be the cri de couer here. Don't.  You'll be better for it in every way.

This would seem to be self evident, but all the known health risks with the pill haven't put much of a dent in its marketing and popularity and all the demonstrated disaster due to synthetic boobs haven't caused that to stop either.

So yes, panic.

Or maybe just "Go organic", in a broader sense.