According to Julia Johnson, the panel’s chairwoman and head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, the impact of the drug flibanserin (proposed trade name: Girosa), developed by the German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim, was “not robust enough to justify the risks.”

Indeed, this is the point many women’s health advocates have stressed all along. The flibanserin trials were considered a success by Boehringer, but the results seem less than stellar.

In a study of 1,378 premenopausal women who had been in a monogamous relationship for 10 years on average, women were randomly assigned to take 100 mg of flibanserin or a placebo daily and to record daily whether they had sex, and whether it was satisfying. Via Time magazine:

Women in the flibanserin group self-reported 2.8 sexually satisfying events in the four-week baseline period; in the final four weeks of the 24-week study period, those women reported 4.5 sexually satisfying events, a more than 50% increase. Women in the placebo group reported an increase from 2.7 events to 3.7. The difference in effect between flibanserin and the placebo — about 0.8 sexually satisfying events — was statistically significant, the drug company said, and the side effects from the drug, which included dizziness and fatigue, among others, were mild to moderate and transient.

So women taking the drug had less than one additional “sexually satisfying event” (orgasm not required) than women taking a placebo. And in the meantime, the drug caused dizziness, nausea and fatigue, particularly with long-term daily use, in some women — hardly the recipe for sexual excitement.

The FDA also considered whether the drug had increased women’s desire — a crucial element of the HSDD diagnosis, which involves low or no sexual interest to the point of distress in people who are physically healthy and not depressed — and found that the drug failed in this area.

And that’s the trickiest part. Erectile dysfunction is treated by increasing blood flow to the penis, which leads to an erection. But for women, it’s not about being physically unable to have sex — it’s that there’s little interest in sex altogether, especially troubling when one has the same long-term partner.

The construction of this as a disorder is a classic case of “disease mongering,” according to clinical psychiatrist and researcher Leonore Tiefer. The hope for a female Viagra, one pill that will “cure” women’s sexual disease, ignores the social and historical context that has a tremendous effect on female attitudes toward sex and is often part of a larger attempt to medicalize the sex lives of women.

Time magazine’s Catherine Elton interviewed Judy Norsigian, executive director of OBOS, who outlined the concern:

Attempting to treat low libido with a pill ignores the fact that many women’s level of desire is deeply affected by everyday life stress and interpersonal relationships. Add to that a cultural milieu that at once promotes shame and ignorance about women’s sexuality while wildly inflating their expectations for sex. In many cases, says Norsigian, the proper solution to a lack of sexual desire would involve a number of non-drug approaches, such as therapy, mind-body techniques and getting partners involved in the solution.

“That could be equally successful while at the same time not exposing women to the [potential] long-term adverse effects of drugs,” says Norsigian, who suggests testing drugs like flibanserin against drug-free therapies. “Moreover, the non-medication approaches often address root causes for lack of libido and thus reflect a prevention approach that is usually much wiser.”

For similar reasons, the New View Campaign has been active in opposing flibanserin, as well as previous drugs such as Intrinsa, a testosterone patch from Procter & Gamble that failed to receive FDA approval in 2004. The Campaign provides several insightful fact sheets that explain the history and side effects of flibanserin.

Particularly revealing is the fact sheet on the marketing of flibanserin [PDF], which shows how Ogilvy Public Relations, on behalf of Boehringer, has promoted HSDD as a chief cause of women’s sexual dissatisfaction — through celebrities, celebrity sexuality experts and promotional websites. Most unsettlingly, Boehringer was able to sponsor and provide editorial input for a Discovery Channel documentary — “Understanding Female Sexual Desire: The Brain Body Connection” — which has acted, in its repeated showing on TV and the web, as an infomercial for the drug.

A better film to watch would be “Orgasm Inc.: The Strange Science of Female Pleasure,” a behind-the-scenes expose of the pharmaceutical industry’s flimsy construction of female sexual dysfunction as a curable disease and the attempt to develop and market a Viagra-type solution.

The centers have often been criticized based on reports that they mislead women about the health and psychological effects of abortion and misrepresent the services they offer. The petition targets members of Congress with a request that they “support legislation that would stop CPCs’ deceptive advertising practices, require that accurate medical information is provided, and eliminate ALL federal funding for CPCs.”

In previous years, the “Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services Act” has been introduced in Congress. The proposed legislation would direct the Federal Trade Commission to make rules prohibiting fraudulent advertising of abortion services, but the act has not made it out of committee.

The campaign page mentions a Congressional report that found that “87% provide false and misleading information about birth control and abortion.” That statement refers to this 2006 report requested by Rep. Henry Waxman, in which 23 of 25 such centers receiving federal funds were contacted by investigators posing as pregnant 17-year-old women trying to decide whether to have an abortion. The investigators reported that the contacted centers provided “false and misleading information” about a link between abortion and breast cancer, the effect of abortion on future fertility, the effect of abortion on future fertility, and the mental health effects of abortion.

In other recent CPC news, controversy broke out over Lilith Fair’s “Choose Your Charity” campaign when it was noticed that initial charity selections included CPCs. In Austin, TX, the city council voted to require pregnancy centers that don’t offer or refer clients to abortion services or birth control services to post signs saying so to reduce confusion about what services the CPCs do and don’t offer. Elsewhere, RH Reality Check notes that the Archdiocese of Baltimore is suing the city over a similar regulation.

While that might not sound like the most appealing way to spend a Monday night, consider these three reasons to attend

Panelist #1: Sarah Haskins created, wrote and performed in the “Target Women” series on Current TV, where she spoofed advertiser’s and marketer’s ridiculous ways of selling women products, entertainment and ideas. She now writes screenplays. Funny ones.

Panelist #2: Susan Kim is a playwright, TV writer and author. She co-wrote “Flow: the Cultural Story of Menstruation” with Elissa Stein, and she has two graphic novels, “City of Spies” and “Brain Camp” (co-written with Laurence Klavan) due out from First Second Books this year. Her plays include the stage adaptation of Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club” and numerous one-acts.

Panelist #3: Allison Silverman launched “The Colbert Report” as co-head writer and later helmed the show as executive producer. She was awarded a Peabody, an Emmy for Outstanding Writing, a Writers Guild Award and three Producers Guild Awards. Her previous writing credits include “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” for which she won a Peabody and an Emmy. Silverman was recently a recipient of New York Women In Film and Television’s Muse Award.

The moderator is Hanna Rosin, co-editor of Slate’s DoubleX and contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

Bonus: 100 percent of the profits at this cultural center go to Housing Works, Inc., which provides housing, healthcare, job training and advocacy for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. Now go with the flow.

Reebok recently launched a new ad campaign for its women’s “Easy Tone” sneakers that is definitely not focused on feet. The shoe’s selling point is that the sole is supposedly constructed in such a way that it works the wearer’s hamstrings, calves and glutes as she walks, resulting in “better legs and a better butt with every step.”

From watching Reebok’s ads, however, one would think that the company is promoting lingerie, not a new fitness sneaker.

One of the ads begins with a close-up of a woman’s breasts in a bra, then pans to her panty-clad backside before briefly flashing a picture of the sneakers. In another ad, the bra is long gone as a faceless woman stretches her body — almost naked except for underwear and sneakers — over a bed. The only thing missing is porno-groove music. Oh wait, it’s there, too.

In the only ad depicting a woman wearing clothes (short shorts and an exercise tank top), she is unable to get the cameraman to focus on her face (instead of her behind) as she presents the virtues of “Easy Tone” sneakers.

YouTube has tagged the videos as “inappropriate for some users” and requires viewers to state that they are 18 before watching.

The late-night style ads aren’t the only bizarre thing about this sneaker campaign. Jami Bernard at WalletPop points to this warning on the Reebok website : “Due to the instability of the balance pods, activities with unplanned side-to-side movement and/or any lateral-movement -sports such as tennis or basketball-should be avoided.”

A fitness sneaker that you can’t play sports in? Huh?

Reebok’s website proclaims that upon wearing the sneakers, “88% of men will be speechless. 78% of women will be jealous.”

I’m 100 percent sure I can find a better way to spend $110.

Meg Young recently graduated from high school in Middlebury, Vt., and will enroll at Tufts University in the fall of 2010 after taking a gap year.

- At Women’s eNews, Kate Kelly describes the work of Lillian Moller Gilbreth, also known as the Mother of Modern Management, who was an industrial engineer and a pioneer in creating work environments that met the needs of the disabled. This is the first I’ve heard of Gilbreth, a mother of 12, and continued to read more about her incredible life at Webster and Wikipedia. Gilbreth’s papers are at Smith College.

- From Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz: “Last week, in a 5-1 ruling, the highest court here ruled that an Ohio law that bans discrimination against pregnant women does not protect them from punishment for taking unauthorized breaks to use a breast pump after they birth those babies. And you thought we were a trendsetter only in presidential election years.” Read on.

- “Mad Men,” my favorite TV show of the moment, offers a poignant look at the trials of women in the workplace in the early 1960s. The series is set at a growing ad agency on Madison Avenue (that’s copywriter Peggy Olson, played by Elisabeth Moss, above), and it’s full of cringe-worthy moments. Seven of the show’s nine writers are women, which Amy Chozick notes is a rarity in Hollywood television.

Joan Wickersham, who worked as a copywriter in a Boston ad agency in the 1980s, writes in the Boston Globe that “long after the 1960s, the workplace was still stuck in the same cultural blind spot satirized in ‘Mad Men.’” She shares this story of a client presenting prototypes of two computer games — the one targeted to boys involved building a railway empire; the one targeted to girls involved deciding where to put furniture in a house.

I suggested to the client that maybe the girls’ game needed a little more substance. The boys’ game was ambitious, intellectually challenging – couldn’t something similar be devised for the girls? Or maybe they didn’t need their own game. Maybe they’d be just as excited as the boys about building a railway empire. Maybe . . .

One of the men I worked with gave me a look. A look that said: “You’re being a pest, and a troublemaker. Shut up.’’

And I did.

Fast forward another 25 years, and consider Wal-Mart’s gendered back-to-school commercials, as described by Claire Mysko:

Boy version with Mom voiceover: “I can’t go to class with him. I can’t do his history report for him, or show the teachers how curious he is. That’s his job. My job is to give him everything he needs to succeed while staying within a budget…I love my job.” Cut to boy with his new affordable laptop. He’s getting applause from his teacher and the students in the class as he delivers a report.

Girl version with Mom voiceover:“I can’t go to school with her. I can’t introduce her to new friends.” Cut to girl nervously asking “Can I sit here?” to a group of girls sitting together at lunch. “Sure, I like your top!” one of them answers. “Or tell everyone how amazing she is. But I can give her what she needs to feel good about herself without breaking my budget. All she has to do is be herself.” Cut to smiling girls walking arm-in-arm down the hallway.

It appears that much work still needs to be done.

The authors observe that the vaccine was “promoted primarily to ‘guard’ not against HPV viruses or sexually transmitted diseases but against cervical cancer,” and provides an interesting critique of the broad approach vaccine-maker Merck used. The company’s tactic was to encourage all girls within a certain age group to be vaccinated as a cancer avoidance measure, rather than to work with public health officials to target those girls at the highest risk:

Marketing this HPV vaccine as an anticancer vaccine appears to have enabled its manufacturer to circumvent possible parental and public unease with an antidote to sexually transmitted diseases. But in doing so, the company bypassed public health officials who would have spearheaded a risk-sensitive vaccination campaign. So too, this manufacturer understandably wanted as many adolescents as possible to be vaccinated. But the pursuit of this goal was neither cost-effective nor equitable. It meant rather than concentrating on populations in geographic areas with excess cervical cancer mortality, including African Americans in the South, Latinos along the Texas-Mexico border, and whites in Appalachia, the marketing campaign posited that every girl was at equal risk: “Your daughter could become 1 less life affected by cervical cancer.”

The authors also explain how, in order to “avoid limiting the vaccine to high-risk populations, promote it for all women, and secure government reimbursement and mandates,” Merck approached professional medical associations (PMAs), and funded them to promote the vaccine. These included the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology, the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists , and the American College Health Association, according to the authors.

Funding to at least one of these organizations was used to develop a kit to guide speakers in promoting the vaccine, including the directive to encourage the audience to ask for state mandates and funding for the vaccine. Speakers were also instructed to play down sexual transmission of HPV, and the organizations were asked to report back to Merck on their promotional talks.

The authors of the commentary describe the ethical problem with this approach, and provide guidance to medical organizations:

Professional medical associations are obligated to provide members with evidence-based data so they can present relevant risks and benefits to their patients. To this end, PMAs must become more transparent about their relationships with industry, disclosing both the precise funding and technical assistance they have received to develop and disseminate the promotional products. Under no circumstances should PMAs administer product-specific speakers’ bureaus, nor should they accept funding that requires them to report activity to the donor.

A related editorial on the risks and benefits of HPV vaccination is freely available in the same issue of JAMA. In it, the author explains that while “the theory behind the vaccine is sound,” long-term follow-up is needed to determine whether there is an effect on cervical cancer incidence 20-40 years from now. The author also notes that the net benefit of the vaccine to an individual woman is currently unknown.

For context, check out this ad for a drug for restless leg syndrome:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Notice the warning about how the medication can cause “new or increased gambling, sexual, or other increased urges”? Really makes you want to try the drug, huh?

Also check out this ad for “Latisse,” a prescription drug for “eyelash hypotrichosis,” which is… get this… when you think your eyelashes are too thin and light.  The product, advertised in medical-sounding language, attempts to convince women that this is a real defect that requires prescription therapy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A recent Times piece on these ads calls this “inadequacy mongering.”

The “Room for Debate” article notes that some lawmakers would like to further regulate direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads, especially when drugs have been newly released. According to a follow-up article on the initial debate, many NY Times readers agree: “Of the more than 300 comments the forum generated … the overwhelming majority would like to see these ads altered or banned altogether.” The article includes excerpts of the relevant reader comments.

For further reading, check out this earlier post on the topic of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising.

About That Pro-Life Majority …: Amy Sullivan always thought the Gallup poll released in May that showed, for the first time, a majority of Americans describing themselves as “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice,” was a fluke. And she was right:

My skeptical interpretation of the poll didn’t turn out to be terribly popular. The idea that just a few months after the election of a pro-choice president, Americans were racing to embrace the pro-life cause was too tempting a storyline. The poll made headlines everywhere, and we ran an essay on it anyway.

Now along comes a follow-up poll from Gallup and whaddya know, the much ballyhooed pro-life majority seems to have disappeared. The percentages of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” and “pro-choice” are essentially the same (47% for pro-life; 46% for pro-choice). Meanwhile, the positions they hold — a more useful indicator than the labels people choose for themselves — haven’t budged. A solid 78% think abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances.

Think Prescriptions Are Private? Think Again: After buying fertility drugs at a pharmacy in San Diego, a woman started receiving coupons and samples in the mail — for everything from diapers and baby formula to gifts for an elementary school graduate — for a child she did not have. Milt Freudenheim writes that your prescription information — including your and Social Security number — is “a commodity bought and sold in a murky marketplace, often without the patients’ knowledge or permission.”

But protections might be strengthened under federal law:

The federal stimulus law enacted in February prohibits in most cases the sale of personal health information, with a few exceptions for research and public health measures like tracking flu epidemics. It also tightens rules for telling patients when hackers or health care workers have stolen their Social Security numbers or medical information, as happened to Britney Spears, Maria Shriver and Farrah Fawcett before she died in June.

“The new rules will plug some gaping holes in our federal health privacy laws,” said Deven McGraw, a health privacy expert at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. “For the first time, pharmacy benefit managers that handle most prescriptions and banks and contractors that process millions of medical claims will be held accountable for complying with federal privacy and security rules.”

The law won’t shut down the medical data mining industry, but there will be more restrictions on using private information without patients’ consent and penalties for civil violations will be increased. Government agencies are still writing new regulations called for in the law.

New Blog: The Global Fund for Women has a new blog: http://globalfundforwomen.wordpress.com. Read about reflections on gender and power; a feminist look at the financial crisis; and tips from Dolores Huerta on keeping activism alive.

Egg-As-Person Crusade Draws Big Money: “In just five short years, the primary movers and shakers in the absolutist anti-abortion/anti-choice movement seeking to promote the ‘personhood’ of zygotes (the single cell that forms after a sperm fertilizes an egg) have amassed nearly $58 million in tax-deductible contributions for their cause,” writes Wendy Norris at RH Reality Check. Norris profiles five organizations that have raised the most money.

Plus: “A Vermont woman whose 6-month-old twin fetuses died after a car crashed into the family van wants them to be legally recognized as children, which is not the case under current state law,” reports the AP.

Why LeRoy Carhart Won’t Stop Doing Abortions: Newsweek profiles Omaha physician LeRoy Carhart, one of three abortion doctors who took turns assisting at the clinic of George Tiller, the Kansas doctor who was murdered in May. Sarah Kliff writes:

Carhart knows there are people who want him dead, too. A few days after Tiller’s murder, Carhart’s daughter received a late-night phone call saying her parents too had been killed. His clinic got suspicious letters, one with white powder. It’s been like this since Carhart started performing abortions in the late 1980s. On the same day Nebraska passed a parental-notification law in 1991, his farm burned down, killing 17 horses, a cat, and a dog (the local fire department was unable to determine the fire’s cause). The next day his clinic received a letter justifying the murder of abortion providers. His clinic’s sidewalks have been smeared with manure. Protesters sometimes stalk him in airports. The threats, the violence, now the assassination of his close friend — all of it has left Carhart undaunted, and the billboard-size sign over his parking garage still reads, in foot-high block letters, ABORTION & CONTRACEPTION CLINIC OF NEBRASKA. “They’re at war with us,” says Carhart of the anti-abortion activist who killed Tiller. “We have to realize this isn’t a difference of opinions. We need to fight back.”

Health Insurance Fail: Sarah Wildman’s daughter cost more than $22,000. Not because of fertility treatments, or adoption. And yes, she and her partner have insurance, which they obtained on the individual market:

Our insurer, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, sold us exactly the type of flawed policy— riddled with holes and exceptions — that the health care reform bills in Congress should try to do away with. The “maternity” coverage we purchased didn’t cover my labor, delivery, or hospital stay. It was a sham. And so we spent the first months of her life getting the kind of hospital bills and increasingly aggressive calls from hospital administrators that I once believed were only possible without insurance.

Wildman continues:

Last fall, the National Women’s Law Center issued a report detailing exactly how women who want to bear children are derailed when searching for out-of-pocket health care. Only 14 states require maternity coverage to be included in insurance sold on the individual market, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In contrast, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 requires employers with more than 15 employees to include maternity benefits in their health insurance packages. “We looked at 3,500 individual insurance policies and only 12 percent included comprehensive maternity coverage,” said Lisa Codispoti, Senior Advisor at the National Women’s Law Center. Another 20 percent offered a rider that was astronomically expensive or skimpy or both. One charged $1,100 a month; others required a two-year waiting period.

Continue reading at Double X.

Gene Mutation That Affects Hair Color Linked to Greater Pain Sensitivity: “A growing body of research shows that people with red hair need larger doses of anesthesia and often are resistant to local pain blockers like Novocaine,” reports The New York Times. The story goes on to note that the mutation in the MC1R gene also occurs in people with brown hair, though it is less common. I think I’m one of ‘em.

Now imagine that instead of walking away frustrated, you reach into your Super Activist Bag and pull out a new, empowering cover — it rereads: “BEAUTIFUL just the way you are.”

You slip it in front of one of the make-over-you magazines and walk away, satisfied for having spread a new message.

This newly launched “art action” is more than a good story. It’s the brainchild of Massachusetts artist Lillian Hsu, who created the website www.bjtwya.com to protest the objectification of girls and women — and to do something about it.

Hsu encourages placing one of the BJTWYA posters “over every stack of magazines that uses the female body to sell something — to sell the magazine, or to sell an article, or to sell a product, or to sell a lifestyle, or to sell a promise, or to sell the idea that you need to match your body to the picture. You decide which covers qualify. You place a poster over them. Then you walk away. That’s it.”

All you need to participate is a supply of posters, which you can get by emailing “bjtwya AT yahoo DOT com” with your name, mailing address, contact information, and number of posters needed. The posters are printed on 8.5×11″ paper, heavy enough to stand up on a magazine rack.

If you have a color printer or can’t wait for delivery, print your own copies of the poster (PDF).

Either way, be sure to visit bjtwya.com to learn more about how Hsu came up with the art action. You’ll also find links to organizations and activists that address media and body image issues. And if you’re anywhere near Gloucester, Mass., an exhibition related to Beautiful Just The Way You Are is at the Jane Deering Gallery through Aug. 3. The opening reception is this Thursday, July 9, 6-8 p.m.

Here’s an excerpt from Hsu’s smartly worded and compelling statement:

The magazine rack is only one of many locations where we are taught the lessons of our culture, but it is one that is ubiquitous throughout our towns and cities and reaches every stratum of the population. At the magazine rack words and pictures work together seamlessly, like a good children’s book, to teach and tell a story of who we are. The covers shout their messages with surprising confidence that we will know these commands are for us. Before we are ten, and then without pause throughout our lives, we internalize the lesson that our bodies are how we will be first judged as individuals, and that there is a body type that we must attain to be judged worthy of attention. We learn that the female body can be used to sell anything — tangible or intangible — to women, men, and children. The use of a motorcycle, a deodorant, a vacation, a necktie, or a beverage implies ownership of the woman’s body pasted into the advertisement. Although all humans are born with beauty and power, our early unquestioned self is quickly corrupted. We adopt an anxiety in navigating a path towards a culturally dictated state of beauty and power.

BEAUTIFUL Just The Way You Are seeks to intervene in the space between all who stand before the magazine rack and the engine of advertising and mass culture. In that space of daily life it places an alternative.

Prop 8 Decision Due Tuesday: The California Supreme Court will announce its decision on Proposition 8 on Tuesday, May 26. The court’s decision will be posted online at 10 a.m.: www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme

Check www.marriageequalityusa.org or www.equalityactionnow.org for info about where and how to organize a response.

“If we must reverse Prop. 8 at the ballot, we will do so,” Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and a lawyer for couples in the case. “We will win – if not on Tuesday, then one day soon.”

A post-decision event is scheduled for Saturday, May 30. Marriage equality supporters from across California will “Meet in the Middle for Equality” at Fresno City Hall to celebrate or protest the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Standing Up For Her Own: Vogue’s Anna Wintour does her best to fulfill every dreaded stereotype of how fashion magazine editors regard the rest the word.

Ruling Against Tobacco Companies: A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a 2006 court ruling that found cigarette companies deceived consumers for decades about the dangers of smoking (view the decision [pdf]). From the Washington Post:

In a 93-page opinion, a three-judge panel cleared the way for new restrictions on how cigarette companies market and sell their products. Under the decision, the manufacturers will no longer be allowed to label brands “light” or “low tar” and will have to purchase ads on television and in major newspapers that explain the health dangers and addictiveness of their products.

Tobacco companies indicated that they will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, a process that would probably put compliance with the ruling on hold for at least several months.

Vermont Shines Light on Payments to Doctors: The Vermont Legislature has passed the nation’s strictest law (pdf) concerning the relationship between the medical industry and doctors. Under the law, which will take effect July 1 (assuming the governor signs it, as expected), pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers would be required to disclose all money given to physicians and other health care providers. Natasha Singer of The New York Times writes:

The Vermont law promises to provide a window into the considerable efforts and spending by device and drug makers to woo doctors even in a small state.

Makers of medical products spent about $2.9 million in fiscal year 2008 on marketing to health care professionals in Vermont, according to a report last month from the state’s attorney general. Of Vermont’s 4,573 licensed health practitioners, almost half received remuneration, including payments for lectures, meals or lodging from pharmaceutical companies in the 2008 fiscal year, the report said.

“If the drug industry gives $3 million on average for three years now to physicians in a small state like Vermont, what is happening in California and New York?” said Ken Libertoff, director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health, an advocacy group that supported the law.

Plus: Richard A. Friedman, MD, a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, writes about the popularity of “sexy blockbuster drugs” that are newer, but not necessarily better, and the effect that drug company marketing has on both patients and physicians.

Midwife Shortage in Mexico: IPS reports on the shortage of professional midwives in Mexico and the training at the only officially accredited Mexican school of midwifery, run by the non-profit Centre for Adolescents of San Miguel de Allende (CASA). Since the school was founded in 1997, 38 professional midwives have graduated; currently, 32 women are being trained.

Violence Against Women – Yawn: “We are so used to violence against women we don’t even notice how used to it we are,” writes Katha Pollitt, in a column on the shooting death of Johanna Justin-Jinich, a Wesleyan University student.

“When we’re not persuading ourselves that women are just as violent toward men as vice versa if you forget about who ends up seriously injured or dead, or pointing out that most murders are of men by men, we persuade ourselves that violence against women just comes up out of nowhere. Murder is serious, especially if the victim is young, white, middle-class, pretty; harassment, abuse, domestic violence, even rape, not so much.” Do go and read the rest.

Student Activists: In her first column as The Plain Dealer’s philanthropy writer, Margaret Bernstein writes about a group of high school girls who are taking on relationship violence. “These girls may not sound like philanthropists, but I think they are. They’re grass-roots philanthropists, using their actions instead of money to spark change.”

Rape Escalates in Eastern Congo: Dominique Soguel reports for Women’s eNews on the worsening sexual violence in the Eastern Congo. “Last week,” she writes, “the Congolese army came under scrutiny from the United Nations and human rights groups for its role in raping, killing and looting sprees during military operations in the two eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.

“Human Rights Watch called on the army to hold accountable soldiers involved in the rape of 143 women and girls, more than half of the 250 rape cases the organization documented in North Kivu.”

Plus: Eve Ensler, writing about the war on women in the Congo, asks: “I was in Bosnia during the war in 1994 when it was discovered there were rape camps where white women were being raped. Within two years there was adequate intervention. Yet, in Congo, femicide has continued for 12 years. Why? [...]

“What is happening in Congo is the most brutal and rampant violence toward women in the world. If it continues to go unchecked, if there continues to be complete impunity, it sets a precedent, it expands the boundaries of what is permissible to do to women’s bodies in the name of exploitation and greed everywhere. It’s cheap warfare.”