Conception control as a health practice: an emerging concept in government and medicine

The health aspects and benefits of conception control as a justification for U.S. government support of family planning are reviewed. The Family Planning Services Act of 1970 set a goal of serving 5 million indigent women by 1975. It is predicted that the program will far surpass that goal. 340 million dollars were asked for contraceptive research by the federal government in fiscal year 1973, which is an example of the commitment to family planning by the government. Theoretical and sociopolitical reasons for family planning do not justify expenditure of public tax spending on population control assistance, but public health does justify those expenditures. Health and population control issues include the mental, physical, and social health of the parent and child, and broad demographic effects of age group population differentials, food supply, pollution, and health care services. The personal effects of an unwanted child are the most serious consequences of a lack of population control including economic and psychological hardship and damage. Maternal and infant mortality is related to age, economic status, and parity; e.g., toxemic pregnancy is more frequently found in young nulliparas. A correlation has been found between rapid parity and prematurity, though the research is not yet completely conclusive. Family planning through contraception and abortion can prevent unwanted pregnancies and unnecessary health risks from pregnancy by enabling parents to space and limit their families with safety. This is a highly desirable public health service goal and is emerging as a major concern of the federal government.     

Perception and Conception: Shaping Human Minds

Perceptual experiences provide an important source of information about the world. It is clear that having the capacity of undergoing such experiences yields an evolutionary advantage. But why should humans have developed not only the ability of simply seeing, but also of seeing that something is thus and so? In this paper, I explore the significance of distinguishing perception from conception for the development of the kind of minds that creatures such as humans typically have. As will become clear, it is crucial to pay careful attention to the different kinds of information that are involved in perceiving and conceiving (including the way such information is gathered and transmitted). By identifying such kinds of information and the role they play, we can then understand an important feature of why creatures like us have the kind of consciousness and mental processes we do.     

Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception

Embodied Progress:. Cultural Account of Assisted Conception. Sarah Franklin. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.252 pp.     

Sex Relations and Gender Relations: Understanding Kwoma Conception

An analysis of Kwoma conception theory shows that the Kwoma regard men and women as mutually dependent equals, and that they regard women as the fertile sex that men must capture and keep so as to reproduce their patrilineages. The relationship between men and women is analogous to that between Kwoma and the bush spirits, sikilowas, the true source of all fertility and well-being.     

The Rapan Theory of Conception

People in Rapa, French Polynesia, attempt to limit their families by abstaining from intercourse during the time they think the woman is most likely to conceive. They have little success with this method of contraception, largely because they believe conception occurs during the three or four days immediately following menstruation. This placement of the fertile period is based on a theory of reproduction quite different from that currently prevailing in the West. The Rapan theory is explained, and other societies holding similar ideas concerning the fertile period are indicated.     

A Neo-Boasian Conception of Cultural Boundaries

For the past 30 years, anthropology's critics have repeatedly questioned the notion of "cultural boundaries," arguing that concepts of culture inappropriately posit stable and bounded "islands" of cultural distinctiveness in an ever-changing world of transnational cultural "flows." This issue remains an Achilles' heel—or at least a recurring inflamed tendon—of anthropology. However, in the conception of boundaries, we still have much to learn from Boasian anthropologists, who conceived of boundaries not as barriers to outside influence or to historical change, but as cultural distinctions that were irreducibly plural, perspectival, and permeable. In this article, I retheorize and extend the Boasians' open concept of cultural boundaries, emphasizing how people's own ideas of "the foreign"—and the "own" versus the "other" distinction—give us a way out of the old conundrum in which the boundedness of culture, as conceived in spatial terms, seems to contradict the open-ended nature of cultural experience.     

Conception and pharmacodynamic profile of drospirenone

Progesterone is more than a progestin. Beyond functions in cycle and pregnancy, progesterone binds with high affinity to the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) acting as an antagonist, with obvious significance for electrolyte homeostasis, an array of MR-related functions in the circulation as well as in the CNS. Progesterone induces natriuresis at physiological concentrations. Lack of antimineralocorticoid activity with conventional progestins may account for sodium and water retention, minor elevation of blood pressure and "pill hypertension" in susceptible women on oral contraceptives. Ethinylestradiol (EE) contributes to this problem by distinct activation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone (RAAS) system. Drospirenone (DRSP: 6beta,7beta,15beta,16beta-dimethylene-3-oxo 17alpha-pregn-4-ene-21,17 carbolactone) is the first synthetic progestin with antialdosterone activity. DRSP and progesterone bind to PR in uterine (affinity of both is about 30% of R5020) and MR in kidney cytosol (affinity about 230 and 100% of aldosterone, respectively). Intrauterine administration of DRSP in silastic tubes induced maximum local progestational effects in rabbits. At systemic subcutaneous (s.c.) administration (McPhail-assay) full endometrial transformation was obtained at 1mg per animal per day. At 1-3mg DRSP per animal per day subcutaneously, pregnancy maintenance after ovariectomy, antiovulatory activity, and antimineralocorticoid activity were seen in the respective assays in rats. The latter activity indicates about eight-fold higher potency than spironolactone. DRSP decreased blood pressure in male hypertensive rats, whereas an increase was noted under conventional progestins. DRSP also prevented hypertension and fetal growth retardation in pregnant rats after L-NAME, an inhibitor of nitric oxide synthase. DRSP has antiandrogenic activity. Feminizing effects were recorded during sexual differentiation in male fetuses at high doses. Powerful antiandrogenic effects were also seen in gonad intact and testosterone substituted castrated male rats. The antiandrogenic potency of DRSP is superior to that of spironolactone but below that of cyproterone acetate. Endometrial transformation, inhibition of ovulation, and antimineralocorticoid, i.e. natriuretic effects and mild antiandrogenic effects were recorded at the same range of oral doses (0.5-4 mg per day) in humans. Combined with EE (3 mg DRSP+30 microg EE), DRSP provides effective inhibition of ovulation and cycle control. Body weight compared to conventional oral contraceptives was reduced. DRSP (3 mg per day+15, 20, or 30 microg ethinyl estradiol per day) prevented the mild increase of blood pressure seen under a conventional levonorgestrel-containing contraceptive and even tended to reduce pretreatment blood pressure. Studies on modulation (i.e. inhibition) of glucocorticoid effects at the MR in the CNS remain an unexplored and interesting area for research.