Exhausted and disoriented, I arrive tossed by storm on the brink of our dystopia to announce the good news to you: now apps are birth control.
Monday, the track period tracking app announced who had received FDA authorization to launch a digital birth control feature that will use statistical modeling track closely of users menstrual cycles to help them better understand their fertility probabilities.
Although he declined to include an exact price or release date for birth control, Clue, which currently has about 13 million users, noted that the feature would be considered a “premium” feature.
The app will work as a version of birth control methods on fertility, which typically use key metrics that include period start dates, body temperature, and changes in cervical mucus to predict when ovulation will occur. But unlike other FAMs, Clue will rely on a single metric (the start date of the period) to project fertility. Using what is known as Bayesian modeling, the application will synthesize this data to predict a “other risk “ several days of the user cycle, during which there is a higher probability of pregnancy (there is alsoLow Risk “ window). On high-risk days, users are advised to abstain completely from sex or to use alternative contraceptive methods, such as condoms, to prevent pregnancy.
“It’s personalized over time,” said Lynae Brayboy, Clue’s medical director, said TechCrunch. “Thus, as the individual enters their first day of cycle, we can customize the window of high-risk days versus low-risk days.”
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When used correctly, Clue claims to be 92% effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies in “typical use” and 97% in perfect use. This is the second time an app proposing a statistical modeling method has received FDA approval in U.S. markets: in 2018, the Natural Cycles app became the first, charging about $ 100 for a thermometer. which users could use to take their body temperature every morning.
It is sometimes referred to indiscriminately as “natural family planning” or “the rhythm method,” FAM he developed a bad reputation over time to be, and I paraphrase it here, homeopathic nonsense that makes an educated conjecture from fertility. In fact, however, the methods do solid efficiency rates when used correctly, but also requires users to be vigilant, responsible, and consistent – adjectives that potentially do not describe the average 20-year-old user.
It is also worth noting that safter the release of Natural Cycles in 2018, the app was sued for allegedly causing it 37 unwanted pregnancies in Sweden. And Clue, even by its own admission, is not for everyone: only people between the ages of 18 and 45 who have regular periods will be allowed to use the app. too irregular will be blocked from application after a while.
But while The FAMs are still far from a perfect science, joIt is also true that mainstream education on birth control has been so dominated by only abstinence messaging those individuals who have period have become almost complete divorced from nature of its own fertility. While hormonal medications such as the birth control pill and reversible long-acting methods such as intrauterine devices (IUDs) work perfectly for some, lots of others are forced to simply tolerate the methods — and the multitude of unpleasant side effects that often accompany them — in a world where few alternatives are considered legitimate.
Is it like that a familiar dilemma for anyone that gets to a point, in that you’re a little damn if you do and damn if you don’t. The best advice, as always, is just to trust your gut and do what you think is right.