THE PILL
Since its inception at the start of the Swinging Sixties, the life of the contraceptive pill has been littered with media scare stories, medical U-turns and ill-advised prescribing practices. Following the release of her tell-all documentary, The Contraceptive Pill: How Safe Is It? we ask Dr Zoe Williams whether the 3.5 million women taking the pill in the UK are really at risk.
Prior to becoming a GP, Dr Zoe Williams had been on the pill for many years. When she was just 15, she remembers the flurry of headlines in 1995, warning women that taking the pill could leave them at risk of fatal blood clots. ‘I’d been prescribed the pill for heavy periods,’ she recalls. ‘I remember my GP ringing up, saying: “Zoe’s got to come in immediately and she must stop taking it.”’
Many years later, Zoe was approached to make a BBC documentary about the pill and it was clear to her from the outset that these headlines would take centre stage. ‘We were surrounded by newspaper clippings about the pill causing cancer, depression and blood clots, so we decided to approach the documentary from the perspective that women were being let down by a prehistoric form of contraception,’ says Zoe. ‘We set out to make an investigative piece that took a close look at the pill and the dangers of taking it.’
As Zoe and her team dug into the research, however, a different picture began to emerge.
