The Pill vs. other pharmaceuticals

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laircy

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I’m wondering if the “pill” when used as medicine is morally worse than other medicines.

There seem to be 2 camps among Catholics when it comes to the pill.
  1. Those who say the pill is okay if used for medical purposes only and not intentionally for birth control
  2. Those who say the pill isn’t legitimate medicine because it doesn’t treat the real issue, has many bad side effects and dangers, etc. They promote other approaches, such as NaPro Technology.
As someone who has spent the last year or so studying holistic health and nutrition, I’ve realized #2 actually applies to MOST pharmaceuticals. They don’t treat the underlying problem, just suppress symptoms, causing side effects that themselves need to be suppressed with yet more drugs, while these things could often be fixed by holistic / diet and lifestyle adjustments. You start to wonder if that whole approach is immoral (because lazy, greedy, and disrespectful of nature). The most telling case I can remember off the top of my head, was from a book I read where some man was on 14 medications, only to find out from an alternative doctor that he was actually undiagnosed Celiac the whole time and half of his medications could be discontinued if he just avoided gluten.

So I guess my question is twofold:

First, are Catholics justified in taking approach #2 above ONLY for the hormonal birth control pill? (Perhaps there is more moral concern if suppressing the symptoms has suppressing fertility as a side effect, than suppressing proper immune function, for instance?)

And second, to what extent might the “big pharma” approach be immoral?
 
Here is #3

A spouse can take the pill for health reasons but must abstain from sexual relations while on the pill because the pill has an abortifacient effect when there is sexual activity.

Contraception is gravely immoral and intrinsically evil when used in the sexual act.
 
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laircy said:
As someone who has spent the last year or so studying holistic health and nutrition
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In “holistic medicine,” the word “holistic” is a synonym for “not.”
 
laircy said:
’m wondering if the “pill” when used as medicine is morally worse than other medicines.
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No.

See Humanae Vitae. Lawful therapeutic means are moral.
laircy said:
Those who say the pill is okay if used for medical purposes only and not intentionally for birth control
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See above. This is correct.
laircy said:
Those who say the pill isn’t legitimate medicine because it doesn’t treat the real issue, has many bad side effects and dangers, etc. They promote other approaches, such as NaPro Technology.
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If people say it isn’t legitimate, they are incorrect.

Whether it’s the best option, that’s an opinion. NaPro can certainly help with many situations. But it isn’t a cure-all, and it isn’t available for everyone due to insurance, geography, and condition.

While it is true that the pill can treat symptoms and not underlying causes in some cases, that doesn’t mean it is immoral or isn’t “legitimate” treatment.
laircy said:
First, are Catholics justified in taking approach #2 above ONLY for the hormonal birth control pill?
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Catholics who do so are exercising their own opinion and not Church teaching.
 
I know there’s a wide variety of “alternatives” that vary in degree of how scientific they are. I only mean the most legitimate of these. To illustrate, I mentioned the person who was suffering from celiac disease but the doctors didn’t care to figure that out and instead prescribed him multiple medications to treat the symptoms he was suffering. In my own experience, I was suffering from acne that turned out to be a reaction to eating eggs but dermatologists did not try to find out the cause and just started prescribing gels and antibiotics. Another example might be taking a statin to lower cholesterol instead of adjusting one’s diet and lifestyle which can also lower cholesterol. Just because there are things to criticize about “alternative medicine” (which is almost too broad to be useful as a term) doesn’t mean there is nothing to criticize about “conventional medicine.” To be clear, these criticisms are mainly against the conventional management of chronic, not acute, disease.

I mainly bring this up because I notice similar criticisms from Catholics against the Pill about how it’s just a band aid for a deeper problem. And I wonder if they only say that because of the prior condemnation of birth control, or if there is a legitimate argument to be made in that same mode, which would also apply to other drugs.
 
The hormonal “Pill” is morally neutral.

If it is used as a contraceptive, it is immoral as contraception is intrinsicly immoral.

The same hormones can be used to treat bodily illness. That is not contraception, it is a moral good to treat illness.

The side effects, the “natural-ness” none of this comes into play. Each marital act must be ordered toward procreation.

If tomorrow it were discovered that wearing the color blue prevented conception in humans, and if we decided to wear blue as a contraceptive, then you blue dress would be immoral.
 
TheLittleLady said:
If tomorrow it were discovered that wearing the color blue prevented conception in humans, and if we decided to wear blue as a contraceptive, then you blue dress would be immoral.
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What if you decided to wear it because you liked how it looked on your but benefited from the contraceptive effect?
 
I still remember my chemistry professor. We got into a conversation in class one day, and he mentioned how the previous medical theory had been all about humours being out of balance, and how they could be realigned with bleeding people. It was the default cure for many illnesses— you’re sick with x? You need to be bled. You’re sick with y? You need to be bled. You’re sick with z? You need to be bled. And a lot of people who were weakened by their illnesses had trouble surviving too much cure…

Nowadays, he said, we do the same thing with our pharmaceuticals. You’re sick with x? Oh, here’s a pill for that. Oh, that has side effect y? Here’s another pill. Now you’re dealing with side effect z? Let me prescribe these two other things to help that out…
 
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“The side effects, the “natural-ness” none of this comes into play. Each marital act must be ordered toward procreation.
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I’m not sure of that first sentence, because of the second sentence. Natural law is pretty central to morality. I guess I’m just wondering when is perverting the faculties against natural law, and when isn’t it. I know in point of fact (apparently) that when it comes to sexuality anything unnatural is wrong, but not other “unnatural” things, but I’m not sure why. I remember that people used to equivocate calling all sorts of things unnatural (in the sense of “artificial,” like eyeglasses) when trying to argue that homosexuality is fine; but it wasn’t a sound argument because in that case their examples were not unnatural in the sense of perverting a faculty. Yet drugs seem like they might fall under this latter. If your body creates a fever for the sake of fighting infection and you take a fever reducer because you want to feel less crummy—but it’s not actually helping you get well— isn’t that perverting a faculty? Is it just morally irrelevant because other faculties aren’t as … theologically meaningful and foundational to society… as sexuality?

Additionally, if the pill is okay to use as a medicine, why do Catholic employers object to covering it in health insurance?
 
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Catholic employers would never object to covering “the pill” if it were being prescribed to treat a medical condition. I think the term “the pill” is being thrown around without understanding. It’s a chemical medicine. Yes, commonly it is used as birth control but it can be used for other ailments. Kind of like liquor can be used to help CAF reading and blood pressure.
 
In my mind, a simple cosmetic reason is far different than taking medicine that treats an illness.
 
LittleFlower378 said:
A spouse can take the pill for health reasons but must abstain from sexual relations while on the pill because the pill has an abortifacient effect when there is sexual activity.
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One can certainly choose this option as an individual but it is absolutely not Church teaching. And is based on a faulty medical understanding as well.
 
Unfortunately part of the problem is that we don’t know how to actually treat the problem in many cases - or may not even really be completely sure what the underlying problem is. While there are some cases where we just missed a simple change, there are many more where we simply don’t know. Or if we know, we can’t fix it.

I would say that the problem is less “big pharma” and more that with advances in medicine we’ve split everything into multiple specialists. It can be very hard to get things taken care of when you’re getting told that you need to see this doctor for this problem, and that doctor for another problem, and no one feels they’re qualified to look at the big picture unless you go to an expensive specialty clinic. But this isn’t inherently a moral problem. It’s a problem with the medical knowledge we have and level of specialization versus what one person can handle.
 
On the other hand, I’m not too worried about my future kids having polio or measles.

Yes, medicine can have side effects that need treatment. But to pretend like modern medicine has not been one of the greatest-ever improvers of life on this earth is simply asinine.
 
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