Hacker News Reader

> If the female birth control pill had the same safety profile, it would be the leading cause of death in 20-45 year old women.

How did you calculate this (genuinely curious, I need some explanation for idiots who're misquoting this trial as "men are wimps")?

View on HN

If it's based on the one suicide and extrapolating to a death rate of 0.3%, I'd call it a bit of a stretch. Yes that would make it the leading cause of death if it did continue, but given the tiny sample size and single occurence (which may or may not be related), I don't think you can draw any conclusion.

Given that uncertainty concluding the study to work on the drug before trialling it again makes a lot of sense.

Extrapolating from one death + one failed suicide attempt + a large number of mood disorders. ezzaf is quite right that you shouldn't extrapolate from the one death alone, since that might have simply been a statistical fluke (although even one suicide is outside of the 95% range for this population and duration of study), but it becomes far more statistically powerful when supported by other side effects which are known to strongly correlate with suicides.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com