A pill for no more periods

A new pill called Lybrel which is up for an FDA approval, will put a stop to every woman's nightmare - the dreaded period! From CBS:

The 39-year-old mother of four suffered all the classic symptoms of PMS. Then she took Lybrel.

"It was just no cramping, no bloating, no chocolate craving or any of that stuff," Nolasco tells CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller.

Lybrel is a new kind of birth-control pill that not only prevents pregnancy, it eliminates periods. Period.

But is stopping menstruation a good thing for a woman's body? According to this CNN piece, doctors say there's no reason why it could be harmful. From CNN:

Sheldon J. Segal, a scientist at the nonprofit research group Population Council, wrote back that a British study found no harm in taking pills with much higher hormone levels than today's products for up to 10 years.

"Nothing has come up to indicate any unexpected side effects," said Segal, co-author of the book "Is Menstruation Obsolete?"

Most doctors say there's no medical reason women need monthly bleeding and that it triggers health problems from anemia to epilepsy in many women. They note women have been tinkering with nature since the advent of birth control pills and now endure as many as 450 periods, compared with 50 or so in the days when women spent most of their fertile years pregnant or breast-feeding.