Happy post-Thanksgiving!

Because Nothing Says Happy Holidays Like Concrete Shoes: Here’s a story from Lockport, N.Y. (via Feministing) that won’t bring much holiday cheer … From the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal:

Richfield Street-based American Concrete had a new billboard erected Monday on West Avenue. Over the image of a wrapped gift, the solicitous catchline, “Wife need new shoes?” is accompanied by the American Concrete logo and a greeting, “Happy Holidays.”

YWCA Executive Director Kathleen Granchelli and a representative of Big Brothers Big Sisters have spoken to the mayor about the billboard, but company owner Kevin McCabe defended the billboard, claiming that because his wife is OK with it, and his sister-in-law conceived of the ad, well, it must be funny.

Granchelli would like McCabe to think about the message it imparts to others, but he’s not budging.

“I think the mainstream understands it,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that some people are reading much more into it than they should.”

News Without Context: News reports have probed every angle in the Stacy Peterson disappearance and how her husband became the prime suspect. But when Anne Glauber tried to persuade media producers to interview a domestic violence advocate, there were no takers. Read Glauber’s story at Women’s eNews.

Affordable Family Planning: Noting the drastic increase in the cost of prescription contraceptives at college health centers, The New York Times advocates for legislation that would make university health centers and safety-net clinics eligible for the discount again. Rachel wrote about the legislation earlier this month.

Unilever Ditches Self Esteem as a Marketing Concept: Because there’s always good ol’ misogyny to promote instead. Lucinda Marshall plays the Unilever games so you don’t have to.

“Study: Feminists Are Better Mates”: You knew this already, but it’s still nice to see that headline in the Chicago Tribune. Judy Peres summarizes the study by Laurie Rudman of Rutgers University and graduate student Julie Phelan:

The results, appearing in the online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Sex Roles, show that for both women and men there was a benefit to having a feminist partner. Feminist women were also more likely than others to be in a romantic relationship.

“If you’re a woman paired with a male feminist,” said Rudman, “you have a healthier relationship across the board” — better in terms of relationship quality, equality, stability and sexual satisfaction.

“And men paired with female feminists have greater sexual satisfaction and greater relationship stability,” she said. “So, [there were] higher scores on two of the four dimensions, with no difference on the other two.”

Princess Power: Disney’s $4 billion Princess empire is expanding its line of products to appeal to middle-class women. “There’s actually an entire line of Princess wedding dresses (in case you’re more of a Cinderella) with matching jewelry and tiaras. Sleepwear and housewares are next,” reports Newsweek. “Disney is also updating some classic narratives to make the protagonists more empowered, which may appeal to women who have kissed a few frogs.”

From the Files of Offbeat News: For your sophisticated environmentally conscious amusement, there’s now a site that promotes CheatNeutral (thanks, Kiki!).

Preventing Salesmanship from Trumping Facts: “Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said Sunday that prescription drug companies should wait two years to begin advertising their new products to consumers,” reports the AP.

“I think two years makes sense. I think it gives enough time for a drug not just to have been tested in clinical trials but to be out among the public, to see what kind of adverse reactions there have been,” he told reporters afterward.

Edwards’ plan also includes increased penalties for companies that violate truth-in-advertising laws and would require companies to disclose more information about a drug’s side effects and effectiveness compared to placebos and less expensive alternative drugs.

How Much Does it Cost to Have a Baby?: According to the latest numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which falls under the Department of Health and Human Services, the cost of having a baby, from the first prenatal visit to delivery, averaged roughly $7,600 for an uncomplicated birth. (This calculation did not include the Bugaboo Cameleon stroller.)

All joking aside, as this article at AlterNet points out, “Despite the relative health of women in the United States, many women are not getting the uncomplicated births they might expect.”

Manda Aufochs Gillespie and Mariya Strauss take a close look at “Listening to Mothers,” the landmark report by Childbirth Connection that looks at women’s attitudes, beliefs, preferences and knowledge from the time before the pregnancy through the postpartum period.

The majority of women ended up attached to IVs, catheters and fetal monitors. They had their membranes artificially ruptured and were given epidurals. Most of these women had little understanding of the side effects of these interventions, including cesarean and medical inductions. The report also shows that though women understood that they had the right to refuse medical interventions, few did, and many received interventions, such as episiotomies, without their consent.

Just as troubling is what is not being done. A “very tiny minority” of women received all of the care practices that promote natural birth.

Griswold v. Connecticut Attorney Dies: “Catherine Roraback, a lawyer who pressed the Connecticut case that eventually led the United States Supreme Court to rule that laws banning the use of contraceptives were unconstitutional, a precursor to its Roe v. Wade decision on abortions, died on Wednesday in Salisbury, Conn. She was 87,” reports The New York Times.

Also see this remembrance of Roraback by columnist Bill Curry, a former counselor to President Clinton.

What’s Your Comfort Level?: Right-wing favorite Sen. Sam Brownback, who dropped out of the presidential race this month due to low polling and poor fundraising, declared that he is “much more comfortable” with Rudy Giuliani’s position on abortion after the two met face-to-face last week. Which makes many of us much less comfortable.

“Justices are key,” said Brownback. “He’s stated publicly many times about his support for strict constructionists like, I believe he said Roberts. John Roberts is a personal friend.”

Cosmetics and Consequences: Heather Gehlert of AlterNet interviews Stacy Malkin, author of “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry,” about the toxic chemicals in everyday beauty products.

When Sex and National Politics Collide … Well, you know it can’t be good for women or women’s health. Gloria Feldt writes about the appointment of Susan Orr — the birth control opponent in charge of administering Title X, the family planning program for low-income women.

With Facts on Our Side: Following the release of the study conducted by the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute that found the number of abortions is relatively unaffected by whether abortion legal, and that access to contraceptives is the best way to reduce abortion rates, Katha Pollitt interviewed antichoice leaders about the findings. The responses, while not completely surprising, are noteworthy for their stubborn refusal to work with facts instead of theology.

Plus: Ann Friedman interviews Pollitt for The Guardian about responses to Pollitt’s new book of personal essays, “Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories.”

Girls Just Want to Have Fun: Sorry, couldn’t resist. The Feminist Press of the City University of New York sure knows how to throw a party … The 37th Anniversary Gala, honoring Cyndi Lauper and Eve Ensler, will take place Nov. 5 at Tavern on the Green. The event features a number of outstanding award recipients.

So Not Pretty in Pink: Cheers for U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), for taking on women’s magazines for running Camel No. 9 cigarettes ads — the pink version of Joe Camel aimed at female smokers.

“In June, 40 of my congressional colleagues joined me in writing to the publishers of 11 leading women’s magazines: Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, InStyle, Interview Magazine, Lucky, Marie Claire, Soap Opera Digest, Us Weekly, Vogue and W. We asked them to stop accepting misleading advertisements for deadly cigarettes, particularly for Camel No. 9,” Capps writes in the Washington Post. “Not one of the magazines bothered to formally respond. We wrote again on Aug. 1. Seven of the 11 magazines responded, but none has committed to dropping the ads.”

National Coming Out Day: Oct. 11 was the day, and Pam Spaulding has a great post about it, with video.

Plus: The New York Times last week looked at the prejudices elder gays and lesbians face, particularly those living at long-term care facilities where little thought may have been given to sensitivity training. Also see the accompanying audio and photos of Fred and Emile, and there’s a good list of related reports and demographic information.

Pink That: Lucinda Marshall at Feminist Peace Network put together a list of some of “the most crass, opportunistic list of supposedly cure-supporting crap I’ve ever seen.” And there’s more where those came from.

Being Anita Hill: “Back then, she was either a charlatan or a heroine, depending which side you took in the epic, gut-wrenching showdown that was the Clarence Thomas confirmation battle,” writes the AP’s Jocelyn Noveck. “Sixteen years later, Anita Hill can be found on a tranquil New England college campus, sifting through thousands of documents to try to answer this question: Have things gotten any better in our nation’s workplaces?”

An Emphasis on Homework: Interested in perfecting your housekeeping skills and learning how to defer to your husband in all matters? Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, offers an academic homemaking program — open only to women — that includes “lectures on laundering stubborn stains and a lab in baking chocolate-chip cookies,” reports the L.A. Times.

Linking Stress to Disease: A commentary in the Oct. 10 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association explores whether psychological stress increases the risk of disease. “The evidence from studies of depression and heart disease is most convincing. The HIV/AIDS data are a little weaker. The evidence for stress playing a role in cancer isn’t all that good, even though there is supporting evidence from studies of animals,” said lead author Sheldon Cohen.

“Perfecting” Ann Coulter: Gloria Feldt, writing at Huffington Post, shares the inspiration for her new list: “Full disclosure: I am mentioned 10 times — more than even Jane Fonda or Betty Friedan — by the anti-feminist Kate O’Beirne in her book, Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. From my perspective, this means I must be doing something right. With those credentials as well as being an aficionada of Keith Olberman’s nightly ‘Worst Person in the World’ shtick, I recently decided to start my own list of the Stupidest Women in America (SWIAA ™).”

Vaginal Cosmetic Surgery: Self magazine takes a close look at vaginal surgeries. One 21-year-old dipped into her student loan money to pay for a labiaplasty that cost $5,000 — and left her “deformed” and in unbearable pain. The reconstructive surgery cost an additional $8,700.

Are Annual Check-Ups a Thing of the Past? According to medical organizations like the the American College of Physicians and other professional groups, it’s no longer recommended. “That’s because there is scant scientific evidence showing that yearly checkups help prevent disease, death or disability for adults with no symptoms. Many tests and procedures performed during the visits have questionable value, experts say,” reports the Chicago Tribune.

According to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which does not endorse yearly physicals, “interventions that help patients change health-impairing habits or that spotlight emerging illnesses for which reliable and effective treatments exist” do make a real difference. Some examples, according to the Trib, are “Pap smears, mammograms, cholesterol tests, blood-pressure checks, and counseling to stop smoking, lose weight, get more exercise and eat a healthier diet.”

UK Promotes Water Births: The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, a UK health watchdog group, issued guidelines stating that all expectant mothers should be offered water births. From The Guardian:

“There is a perception that water is just nice,” said Dr Julia Sanders, a consultant midwife and member of the group which drew up the guidance. “But it is the most effective form of pain relief barring an epidural in labour. I would like to see more women using water and fewer women using the types of pain relief that are less effective.”

Nice also said clinical intervention should not be offered or advised when labour was progressing normally and the woman and baby were well. Once a woman was in established labour, she should receive supportive one-to-one care.

The guidance is expected to mean longer labours for some but could also mean fewer medical interventions, which can result in more painful and complicated labours.

Salon’s Michael Scherer has a very funny (and informative!) write-up on last night’s Democratic presidential debate — a shorthand version of what you missed while watching “Bionic Woman.”

Here’s my favorite part:

57 minutes. A question goes to all of the candidates. Would it be appropriate for a schoolteacher to read a story about a gay couple to their children in second grade? “Yes, absolutely,” says Edwards. “What I want is I want my children to understand everything about the difficulties that gay and lesbian couples are faced with every day.” Obama agrees. So does Clinton.

62 minutes. Another commercial break. Hopefully no children in second grade are watching. This time MSNBC shows an advertisement for Cialis, a pill that promises an erection at any point between 30 minutes and 36 hours after consumption. Sometimes erections may last for four hours or cause temporary loss of vision.

Heh.

Last week, the New York Times published the article, “A Genetic Test That Very Few Need, Marketed to the Masses,” reporting on a direct-to-consumer advertising campaign by Myriad Genetics.

Myriad is pushing its “BRACAnalysis” genetic test in these ads, which costs $3,120 according to the news report, and is described online as “A genetic test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.”

BRACAnalysis isn’t truly a test for breast and ovarian cancer, however, but a test for mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that are believed to be associated with some cases of breast and ovarian cancer. Your genes, however, are not the only factor in determining your cancer risk. Furthermore, these mutations are estimated to be related to only about 10 percent of breast cancer cases, and it is estimated that only about 2 percent of women have family risk factors that would suggest that genetic testing might be worthwhile.

In other words, the vast majority of women who will see these commercials would not benefit from obtaining this test. While a doctor would still have to be consulted for a patient to receive the test, that is not a guarantee of appropriate use of the testing or adequate counseling of patients about their options.

Myriad previously conducted a similar campaign in other markets in 2002-2003, which resulted in providers reporting being asked more frequently about the tests and ordering them more often, despite acknowledging that they lacked sufficient information to counsel patients about inherited breast and ovarian cancers and testing.

Even when increased family risk suggests that genetic testing might be warranted, women who find that they have a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation have surprisingly few options for preventing future cancer. In a recommendation statement on genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancers, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force states:

Among women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, prophylactic mastectomy or oophorectomy decreases the incidence of breast and ovarian cancer; there is inadequate evidence for mortality benefits. Chemoprevention with selective estrogen receptor modulators may decrease incidence of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer; however, it is also associated with adverse effects, such as pulmonary embolism, deep venous thrombosis, and endometrial cancer. Most breast cancer associated with BRCA1 mutations is estrogen receptor-negative and thus is not prevented by tamoxifen. Intensive screening with mammography has poor sensitivity, and there is no evidence of benefit of intensive screening for women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may detect more cases of cancer, but the effect on mortality is not clear.

What does that mean in plain language? If you have one of these genetic mutations, you could choose to have your breasts or ovaries removed now, even though the evidence is limited that this would decrease your risk of death. You could up your frequency of cancer screening, but that may not detect every case of cancer or affect your lifespan. You could choose to take certain drugs, but the effects of the drugs themselves may be life-threatening.

What is the purpose, then, of so many women being targeted by Myriad’s commercials? Ellen T. Matloff, director of cancer genetic counseling at the Yale Cancer Center, summed it up neatly for the New York Times piece:

“It really preys on the fears of our society, and one of those fears is getting breast cancer.”

Essentially, Myriad is attempting to convince women to be afraid of what lurks in their genes (understanding that many women are not knowledgeable about this topic), and to convince them to seek this expensive testing, ultimately benefiting Myriad’s bottom line if not the women themselves.

Connecticut’s Attorney General is sufficiently suspicious of this strategy as to have launched an inquiry, stating, “We’ve determined that there’s enough serious and significant doubt about the accuracy of some of their claims that we feel a strong need to investigate.”

For related information from Our Bodies, Ourselves, see “Genetic Testing and Inherited Risk,” “One Woman’s Story with BRCA1,” and this recent news item suggesting that breast cancer patients with and without the mutations have similar survival rates.

Film With Same-Sex Parents Splits School District: Children in a state-approved educational video called “That’s Family!” shown talking about interracial families, divorce and adoption — all good. But when a boy introduces his two dads, during the film shown to third graders, and another child says, “It’s really cool have to two gay dads, because they brought us into a home, and they adopted us, and they love us,” well, as Richard G. Jones writes in The New York Times:

That was enough to entangle this wealthy suburb of 45,000, about 15 miles east of Philadelphia, in a heated debate among parents and educators. As the issue simmered, the district decided to shelve the film, provoking the threat of a lawsuit by gay rights activists who said the district’s refusal to show the video was a violation of state antidiscrimination laws.

What Happened to America’s Breasts?: America Ferrera, who stars on “Ugly Betty,” got photoshopped big time as cover girl for Glamour magazine’s October issue — billed as the “1st annual figure flattery issue!” Natch.

Check out Apollo’s blog at AfterEllen.com for the story and good analysis. And read Guanabee’s full translation of the Glamour interview, which begins:

GLAMOUR: So 11 Emmy nominations for Ugly Betty, two new films in the works. You’re huge!

[Translation: How can you be successful? You’re huge!]

Drug Companies, Medical Journals and Money: Kent Sepkowitz, a physician in New York City, makes the argument at Slate that the “public deserves to know about the extent to which every medical journal relies on pharmaceutical advertising revenue to run its business.”

The New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, receive about $18 million and $27 million each year, respectively, for display advertisements, according to this 2006 study on advertising and peer-reviewed journals.

“The consequence of the pharma-journal relationship is far from abstract,” writes Sepkowitz, who goes on to provide an example of when the marketing department of Dialysis & Transplantation, a journal for kidney specialists, initially overruled reviewing scientists on the publication of an editorial against a double dose of a pharmaceutical product when the regular dose worked just as well.

Hormone Patch Opens Debate: “The arrival on the European market of a female-targeted testosterone patch to treat low sex desire caused by menopause is raising new questions in the United States about why there is no equivalent product on pharmacy shelves,” writes Frances C. Whittelsey at Women’s eNews. “Opponents say that there is good reason why, and the patch is not ready for U.S. approval.”

Wishing Life Would Mirror Art: A 13-year-old star of a Bangladeshi soap opera that promotes girls’ education hopes she can be as lucky as her character and get to stay in school. “I feel depressed. But a lot of girls in the slums face the same pressures,” Shimu tells Emily Wax of the Washington Post.

Alcohol Consumption and Cancer Risk: Postmenopausal women consuming two or more alcoholic beverages a day may double their risk of endometrial cancer, according to a study led by University of Southern California researchers. The study appears in the International Journal of Cancer.

“This is the first prospective study to report a significant association between alcohol and endometrial cancer,” says Veronica Wendy Setiawan, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “Previous studies have shown that alcohol consumption has been associated with higher levels of estrogens in postmenopausal women, which could be the mechanism by which daily alcohol intake increases one’s risk of endometrial cancer.”

Man-Made Chemicals Causing Birth of More Girls: “Twice as many girls as boys are being born in some Arctic villages because of high levels of man-made chemicals in the blood of pregnant women, according to scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap),” reports The Guardian.

The scientists measured the man-made chemicals in women’s blood that mimic human hormones and concluded that they were capable of triggering changes in the sex of unborn children in the first three weeks of gestation. The chemicals are carried in the mother’s bloodstream through the placenta to the foetus, switching hormones to create girl children. [...]

Scientists believe a number of man-made chemicals used in electrical equipment from generators, televisions and computers that mimic human hormones are implicated. They are carried by winds and rivers to the Arctic where they accumulate in the food chain and in the bloodstreams of the largely meat- and fish-eating Inuit communities.

All of which prompts Broadsheet’s Carol Lloyd to write: “If nothing else, this is news that makes me think about the novel “Herland” in a whole new light — not as a bit of charming feminist Victoriana but a sci-fi horror story.”

There was some scary news in the L.A. Times this week about the rise in the number of adverse reactions to prescription medication:

The number of serious adverse events and deaths attributed to prescription medications has nearly tripled since the Food and Drug Administration initiated a system in 1998 to make it easier to report significant side effects, researchers said Monday.

Twenty percent of drugs accounted for 87% of adverse effects, and the biggest offenders were painkillers and drugs that modify the immune system to treat arthritis, according to the report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

A quarter of the increase could be attributed to a boost in prescriptions and an additional 15% to the introduction of new biotechnology drugs since 1998, but the rest could not be explained, said drug safety expert Thomas J. Moore of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices in Huntingdon Valley, Pa.

“The clear finding is that we are losing ground in terms of drug safety, and that ought to be of great concern,” said Moore, who led the study.

The abstract of the report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine is available online, though the full text requires a subscription. The study’s authors are affiliated with Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, which educates healthcare workers and consumers about safe medication practices.

The FDA and a trade group representing drug makers attribute much of the increase to more people reporting their reactions to the FDA. The L.A. Times notes, however, that studies have shown that anywhere “from as little as 3% of adverse events to a maximum of about 33% have been reported to the FDA.”

Take a look at these numbers: Between 1998 and 2005, the number of adverse reactions increased from 34,966 to 89,842, while the the number of deaths during that period increased from 5,519 to 15,105.

Women accounted for 55.5 percent of all adverse events, with elderly women accounting for a whopping one-third of all reactions, even though they only account for 12.6 percent of the population.

During that same seven-year stretch, the number of prescriptions written each year increased by 25 percent.

The story doesn’t pursue why there was a such a huge increase in prescriptions, but it does spark a few questions: Does it correspond to an an increase in the number of people who became sick? Or is it reflective of the number of new effective treatments? Or is it merely a sign of how pervasive medications have become — and how the bar has been lowered in terms of what’s considered a risk factor that needs to be treated?

For instance, a growing number of women without heart disease or diabetes are taking cholesterol-lowering statins, even though there is no clear evidence that it can reduce their future risk.

Judy Norsigian, OBOS executive director, and John Abramson, author of “Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine,” wrote an op-ed on the subject earlier this year in which they noted the disconnect between the statin studies and the practice of prescribing the drugs:

The experts who wrote the guidelines cite seven studies that they claimed show cholesterol-lowering statins to be beneficial for such women with a 10-20 percent risk of developing heart disease in the next 10 years. But, as one of us (JA) pointed out in a recent peer-reviewed article in the respected British medical journal the Lancet, there has never been a single clinical trial showing that statin therapy is beneficial for women who don’t already have heart disease or diabetes. Not one. Even the guideline authors admit that clinical evidence to support their recommendations is “generally lacking” and that their recommendations are made by “extrapolation of data from men.”

We think this is exploitation not extrapolation.

We’d be remiss, of course, if we didn’t acknowledge how this also ties into the enormous increase in pharmaceutical advertising, both direct to consumer and to medical providers, and the commercialization of medical studies, which are now almost three times more likely to be carried out by for-profit research companies than by nonprofit medical centers.

A story published last month in the L.A. Times as part of a knock-out series on the effectiveness of pharmaceutical marketing efforts sheds more light on how drug makers are driving sales:

As marketing budgets climbed toward a 2006 high of $28 billion, sales of prescription drugs have never been higher. According to estimates published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the number of individual prescriptions filled in the United States rose from 2.9 billion in 1999 to 3.7 billion in 2006; in 1994, Kaiser calculated that each American filled on average 7.9 prescriptions per year, including refills; by 2005, that number had risen to 12.4.

For every 10% increase in direct-to-consumer advertisements within a class of similar drugs, sales of drugs in that class (say, antidepressants or erectile dysfunction drugs) went up 1%, Kaiser found in a 2003 study. In 2000, direct-to-consumer advertising alone boosted drug sales 12%, at an additional cost of $2.6 billion to consumers and insurers.

Of more than 10,000 drugs on the U.S. pharmaceutical market, half of all marketing budgets are used to promote 50 brand-name medications, according to a 2003 study in the journal Clinical Therapy. And those 50 drugs are the ones that sell the best.

As Abramson writes in “Overdosed America”: “More care doesn’t necessarily mean better care.”

Senate Votes to Repeal Global Gag Rule: “Defying a White House veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted Thursday to overturn a long-standing ban on U.S. funding for overseas family planning groups that support abortion,” reports the L.A. Times. “The vote was 53-41, short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto on an issue that has been contentious on Capitol Hill since President Reagan instituted the ban. Even so, the vote was a sign of determination by Democrats to press for substantial changes in federal policies, even though they have only a narrow majority in the Senate.”

Read more about the global gag rule; and here’s more analysis from RH Reality Check.

Ad Nauseum: Shannon Brownlee, author of “Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer,” talks with Brooke Gladstone of NPR’s “On the Media” about the influence of direct-to-consumer drug marketing. One example given: When the sleep drug Lunesta hit the market, so did an epidemic of sleeplessness.

Stress and Pregnancy: The New York Times has a Q&A interview with Dr. Sarah L. Berga, “one of a handful of physician-scientists exploring how chronic stress may keep some women from ovulating and how relaxation techniques may help.”

Why More Cosmetic Companies Are Going “Paraben-Free”: “For years, parabens (methyl, ethyl, propyl and benzyl) have been considered a cheap and indispensable way to inhibit the growth of bacteria, yeasts and molds in personal-care products such as shampoos, conditioners, deodorants and sunscreens,” writes Chicago Tribune health reporter Julie Deardoff. “But studies have shown that some parabens can mimic the activity of the hormone estrogen in the body’s cells. Estrogenic activity in the body is associated with certain forms of breast cancer. And parabens are turning up in breast tumors.”

Condom Nations: Foreign Policy magazine presents data from the Durex Global Sex Survey, the world’s largest sex survey (317,000 participants in 41 countries). Why is it surprising that people in richer countries have more sexual partners than people in poorer countries?

Treating Men and Women Differently: “Research presented at the annual European Society of Cardiology meeting in Vienna suggested that surgeries which typically save men’s lives can be deadly for women,” reports the AP. “A small study of 184 women conducted by Dr. Eva Swahn of the department of cardiology at University Hospital in Linkoping, Sweden, found that women who had major heart operations like a coronary bypass were more likely than men to die.”

NFL Mirrors Society: From a USA Today editorial: “Even people who aren’t football fans have heard about Michael Vick, the star quarterback whose abuse of pit bulls led to a guilty plea on federal dogfighting charges, drew public vilification and spurred an indefinite suspension from the NFL. Far fewer people have heard of Michael Pittman, another NFL player accused of violence. In May 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back was arrested on charges of ramming his Hummer into a car driven by his wife and carrying their 2-year-old child and a babysitter.”

“Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History”: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who wrote that sentence in an article entitled “Virtuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735″ two decades ago, has now written a book exploring the hidden history of women.

“‘Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History’ is by no means jargon-ridden or academic in tone,” writes Michael Dirda in the Washington Post. “Ulrich’s style is plain and direct, agreeable but without frills, and she moves efficiently right along. The book is a pleasure to read.”

Madeline L’Engle Dies at at 88: L’Engle, a graduate of Smith, wrote the children’s classic “A Wrinkle in Time,” and other wonderful stories — many of which featured a girl as the protagonist. From The New York Times obit:

In the “Dictionary of Literary Biography,” Marygail G. Parker notes “a peculiar splendor” in Ms. L’Engle’s oeuvre, and some of that splendor is sheer literary range. “Wrinkle” is part of her series of children’s books, which includes “A Wind in the Door,” “A Swiftly Tilting Planet,” “Many Waters” and “An Acceptable Time.” The series combines elements of science fiction with insights into love and moral purpose that pervade Ms. L’Engle’s writing.

Making women into sex objects is one thing, but making violence against women attractive and titillating is another.

That’s just what the marketers of the recently released thriller “Captivity” have done, however. The film chronicles the abduction and torture of a young model. We’ll let the the synopsis from the official film website take over from there:

Everyone wants her. But someone out there has been watching and waiting. Someone wants her in the worst way. Out alone at a charity event in Soho, Jennifer is drugged and taken. Held captive in a cell, Jennifer is subjected to a series of terrifying, life-threatening tortures that could only be conceived by a twisted, sadistic mind.

“Captivity narratives” actually have a long history in American culture, originating with tales of “proper” white women being kidnapped by Native Americans. So it’s unfortunate but not surprising that we see Hollywood once again perpetuating the cheap thrill that this scenario provides.

What is surprising though is the shameless way the film is being promoted. As Ann at Feministing described last week, the original, jaw-dropping billboard for the film prompted a number of critiques, including this piece in The Nation by Annabelle Gurwitch and Jill Soloway’s commentary at the Huffington Post. Both women happened to be driving in cars with young children when they saw the billboards.

“I was driving a carpool of third graders to school when my son pointed at a large looming advertisement and asked, ‘What’s that, mom?’” writes Gurwitch. She continues:

I craned my neck — it was pretty high up, but still visible from the car — and glimpsed some extremely violent and disturbing images. What was being depicted exactly was hard to make out …. A woman crying, maybe; someone encased in a mask with tubes inserted in the nasal passages; and finally what looked like a female body lying inert, her body draped over a bed. The poster read: “Abduction, confinement, torture, termination.” Naturally, as a left-wing liberal, I assumed it was detailing abuses at Abu Ghraib and the anguish this has inflicted on the spouses of the prisoners. But no, it was advertising a movie.

To the children, however, I replied, “That person has just found out she’s very ill. She goes to the hospital and is placed in a full-body cast, and when she gets home she sees her medical bills, which are so exorbitantly high that she passes out.” Were they convinced, confused, politically indoctrinated? I’m not certain, but the rest of the ride to school was very, very quiet.

Gurwitch is obviously trying to bring a little bit of levity to the situation here, but her responses inspires Ann to pose a serious question directly to her readers — “How do you talk to your kids (and others’) about sexist images in the media, particularly disturbing or violent ones like the Captivity ads?” The extended discussion that ensues is valuable.

Joss Whedon, creator of “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and other feminist narratives, called out the same posters as well as the trailer for the film back in May. While he doesn’t discuss its effect on children specifically, he does see the marketing campaign as insidiously playing upon embedded sexist attitudes in American culture.

Interestingly, Vanessa at Feministing had already written — several weeks before Ann — about how disturbed she was by the film’s marketing campaign. But she was criticizing the revised version of the film’s advertising — not knowing anything about the original billboard campaign.

The marketers of the film apparently got the message, but they didn’t learn the lesson.

Trojan condoms has unveiled a new advertising campaign that both CBS and Fox networks have refused to air — apparently because pregnancy prevention is not a good enough reason to promote condom use.

Andrew Adam Newman writes in The New York Times:

Both had accepted Trojan’s previous campaign, which urged condom use because of the possibility that a partner might be H.I.V.-positive, perhaps unknowingly. A 2001 report about condom advertising by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that, “Some networks draw a strong line between messages about disease prevention — which may be allowed — and those about pregnancy prevention, which may be considered controversial for religious and moral reasons.”

Representatives for both Fox and CBS confirmed that they had refused the ads, but declined to comment further.

In a written response to Trojan, though, Fox said that it had rejected the spot because, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”

In its rejection, CBS wrote, “while we understand and appreciate the humor of this creative, we do not find it appropriate for our network even with late-night-only restrictions.”

“It’s so hypocritical for any network in this culture to go all puritanical on the subject of condom use when their programming is so salacious,” said Mark Crispin Miller, a media critic who teaches at New York University. “I mean, let’s get real here. Fox and CBS and all of them are in the business of nonstop soft porn, but God forbid we should use a condom in the pursuit of sexual pleasure.”

While Fox and CBS are being criticized for their decision, the commercial itself is drawing mixed reviews. Vanessa at Feministing writes:

So do I like the commercial? Not particularly, but I looked through the website of this new campaign Trojan is launching titled “Evolve,” and it definitely sounds like one I’d be willing to support: they discuss the misinformation that abstinence-only programs put forth about the inefficacy of condoms, the fact that often ideology is often promoted over real information, and their intent to put forth the message that “sex isn’t an unhealthy thing needs to be policed or demonized.”

And Tracy Clark-Flory writes at Broadsheet:

I was first alerted to the ad by a press release this morning from Planned Parenthood calling for the networks to reconsider their decision to block the spot. I was shocked to find that there’s plenty about the ad that actually offends my own sensibilities. For starters: The depiction of men as pigs. I can understand the idea behind it — that men who do not respect their partners enough to protect them from pregnancy or disease are pigs. But filling an entire bar with the nastiest of male stereotypes implies that almost all men are pigs. I’m also not too hot about the underlying message that men are solely responsible for condom use.

Ultimately, however, Clark-Flory concludes: “I have a hard time passionately defending the actual content of the ad — but I have a much harder time defending the networks’ reasons for blocking it.”

According to the NYT, the commercial will run on ABC, NBC and nine cable networks, including MTV, Comedy Central and Adult Swim, along with print ads in 11 magazines and promotions on seven websites.

The Times also provides a bit of condom history and market data:

The 87-year-old company placed its first ad in trade magazines for pharmacists in 1927, when druggists still kept condoms behind the counter. Though out in the aisles for decades, condoms are still purchased furtively: while the average time shopping for a home-pregnancy test is 2.5 minutes, the average condom buyer takes just 7 seconds, according to research by Trojan. “We call it a drive-by purchase,” Mr. Daniels said. “People to this day are embarrassed.”

In its new commercial, the word “Trojan” is never uttered, and the logo appears only briefly on the bathroom’s vending machine and at the end. But with what according to A. C. Nielsen Research is 75 percent of the condom market (Durex is second with 15 percent, LifeStyles third with 9 percent), [Jim Daniels, vice president for marketing], said the company was focusing less on growing market share than growing the market. The annual condom market is now $416 million, according to Packaged Facts, a division of MarketResearch.com.

Sometimes the problem just seems to be always hanging over your head — on a billboard, perhaps.

Near the upscale Chicago suburb of Glenview, residents are outraged by the presence of a 10-foot-by-36-foot billboard advertisement for a local spa showing a supposedly flawless model lying on the beach with text identifying potential “problem” areas such as “cellulite and saddlebags” and “facial lines and wrinkles” along with “solutions” like “botox” and “lipodissolve.”

“I was shocked,” said Regina Thibeau. “I was offended as a woman, angered as a mother and embarrassed as a resident of Glenview.”

Even though more than 300 people have signed a petition, the billboard is there to stay, according to the salon owner Pascal Ibgui, who leased the advertising space through July along with his plastic surgeon partner, Steven Bloch.

Ibgui, a French native, told the Chicago Tribune that he believes the protests reflect an American prudishness, which he refuses to enable by taking the billboard down. Economics, of course, also plays a role:

In a recent direct mail campaign, Ibgui and Bloch sent cards to 25,000 households on the North Shore featuring the same picture as the billboard. The mailings brought in so much business that the salon and spa decided to take it to a bigger medium, Ibgui said.

He said the billboard caters, in part, to his “huge” male clientele.

“I don’t want to sound like a chauvinistic pig, but this is a man’s world,” he said.

Well, at least Igbui recognizes patriarchy at work — and unwittingly admits the connection between male power and our culture’s obsession with a very narrow definition of female beauty.

Below is the billboard’s close-up. The Trib has a larger photo here.

Judy Norsigian, executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves, wrote a stinging indictment of pharmaceutical advertising that was published yesterday at Women’s Media Center.

Norsigian argues that direct-to-consumer advertising, which the FDA approved in 1997, has dramatically changed the way people view health and medicine — as “drug companies move beyond promoting certain pills for treatment of diagnosed conditions to expanding their use in healthy people.”

While prevention is generally a good approach to health, the preventative medicine that drug companies are selling is frequently unnecessary and often not worth the associated risks:

The over-selling of postmenopausal hormones, supported by the depiction of natural menopause as a hormone deficiency disease, was the forerunner to this type of sales pitch, which now permeates the media. Aging, social anxiety disorder, heartburn, restless leg syndrome, and overactive bladder are all examples of symptoms or normal physiological events that are now presented to consumers as being in need of long-term drug treatment.

Norsigian also reveals some surprising loopholes in the regulation that governs these ads:

Most lay people — and even many physicians — are not aware that drug ads are not checked by the FDA for accuracy beforehand, and are pulled only after complaints are made and verified. This usually takes about six months, and the drug company is given a grace period of several additional months, by which time most ads would have been changed anyway. A company is rarely required to run a corrective ad, and there is no other penalty for misleading the public. Thus, while the FDA sends hundreds of letters each year requiring drug companies to retract their ads, most people don’t hear about them.

Norsigian also suggests that women should avoid the drugs that are most frequently advertised — or for which they have coupons — because those tend to be “most expensive drugs” and the ones “with the shortest track records of safety.”

Ultimately Norsigian calls on women to find independent sources of information about any treatment. (In terms of interpreting the messages of pharmaceutical companies, Healthy Skepticism, an international non-profit health organization, breaks down misleading advertising in its “AdWatch” section of its website. And Health News Review does a good job of analyzing media coverage of health-related issues and newly released medical studies.)

Our Bodies, Ourselves has several articles that examine the effects and influence of direct-to-consumer advertising. Start here.

Viagra’s new ad campaign (only shown in Canada at the moment) is acting as a microcosm of everything wrong with the unfettered marketing of pharmaceuticals.

For the duration of the ad, men and women talk in a made-up language. Among the suggestive winks and nods, only the repeated word “Viagra” is comprehensible. From The New York Times:

“Viagra spanglecheff?” says a man to a friend at a bowling alley.

“Spanglecheff?” his friend asks.

“Minky Viagra noni noni boo-boo plats!” the first man replies, with a grin that suggests he is not talking about the drug’s side effects. The ads end with the slogan, “The International Language of Viagra.”

An executive from the advertising firm that created the ad bluntly admits, “It’s not as though we need to tell people what it does, because they already know. Consumers can fill in the blank for themselves.”

To that sentiment Dr. Sidney World, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, responds, “In an ideal world, companies would have to sell drugs based on accurate and balanced information. That doesn’t seem to work well enough, so instead of that they’re substituting gibberish.”

Recent bills aimed at overhauling the Food & Drug Administration don’t go far enough in protecting the public from potentially dangerous drugs and medical devices, OBOS Executive Director Judy Norsigian and Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women & Families, argue in an op-ed published in today’s Boston Globe.

Last year, Mike Enzi, a conservative Republican from Wyoming, was in charge of health legislation in the Senate, and [Sen. Edward] Kennedy was in the minority party. The two senators introduced a drug safety bill that pleased the pharmaceutical industry considerably more than consumer advocates. This, supposedly, was the best these advocates could get from a Republican Congress.

The bill was delayed, luckily, and much has happened since then. Kennedy is now in charge of health legislation in the Senate. Nevertheless, he and Enzi introduced the same bill this year.

When drugs are allowed into the market before their side effects are fully evident, the potentially deadly results are all too familiar: think of drugs like Vioxx, Trasylol, and Ketek, and devices such as drug-eluting stents and defibrillators.

Preventing unnecessary deaths will take more congressional muscle. For example, when new drugs are widely advertised to consumers before the risks are known, thousands of those who take them may be harmed. Most could have been treated by older, safer, cheaper drugs. That’s why the American Medical Association, most physicians, and the Institute of Medicine — a respected nonprofit that offers advice on biomedical issues — recommend a two-year moratorium on direct-to-consumer advertising of all new drugs.

That sounds like a great idea, but the Senate bill rejects it. Instead, it would allow (but not require) the FDA commissioner to impose a moratorium only when there is clear evidence that advertising to consumers would harm patients. This is hard to prove because new drugs lack data on widespread use. Even worse, Kennedy’s bill doesn’t even require the FDA to review new drug ads for accuracy.

Continue reading here.

Doctors Examine Themselves: Barron H. Lerner, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, has written an interesting review of two books by doctors who are also frequent contributors to The New Yorker magazine:

The new books — “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance” by Atul Gawande and “How Doctors Think” by Jerome Groopman — share a similar message: The performance of physicians is less than perfect. The question is whether scrutiny of such imperfections can lead patients to become better medical consumers and thus receive better care. [...]

Physician-writers have only recently detailed the deficiencies of medicine to the public. For most of the 20th century, doctors urged one another to conceal medical errors, largely because they feared lawsuits. But as a result of a series of research scandals in the 1970s, charges of paternalism and spiraling health care costs, medicine could no longer remain insular. Greater scrutiny of what doctors do came from journalists, bioethicists, insurers and economists — and, eventually, from doctors themselves.

Birth Control Prices Soar on Campus: “Millions of college students are suddenly facing sharply higher prices for birth control, prompting concerns among health officials that some will shift to less preferred contraceptives or stop using them altogether,” reports The AP’s Justin Pope (via Washington Post). “Prices for oral contraceptives, or birth control pills, are doubling and tripling at student health centers, the result of a complex change in the Medicaid rebate law that essentially ends an incentive for drug companies to provide deep discounts to colleges.”

It’s astounding that apparently no one saw this coming when Congress passed a deficit-reduction bill in 2005. The bill took effect in January of this year, and the way Pope explains it, “the discounts to colleges mean drug manufacturers have to pay more to participate in Medicaid. The result: Fewer companies are willing to offer discounts.”

Cosmetics Industry Tries to Build Case with Consumers: Kara Alaimo reports for Women’s eNews on the public relation efforts by the Cosmetics, Toiletry and Fragrance Association to reassure consumers that the use of phthalates — a chemical used to prolong color, scent and absorption — doesn’t pose a health risk. “There are huge gaps in what we know about cosmetic chemicals,” said Stacy Malkan, a spokesperson for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. “There is new science coming out almost daily about the negative effects of these chemicals. The industry is under increased regulatory pressure.”

Modern Makeup: Reading Seth Stevenson’s take on a new Dove commercial led to this 1998 piece by Judith Shulevitz on the feminist history of beauty products.

Teaching Moment: Rocky Mountain News columnist Tina Griego weighs in on the challenge of raising girls, a la the American Psychological Association’s recent report on the sexualization of young girls and Judith Warner’s recent New York Times (Select) op-ed on mothers as “agents of destruction requiring change” because they don’t practice what they preach around their daughters when it comes to, say, promoting a healthy body image. Griego’s comments about her daughter are incredibly sweet.

New Magazine Debuts for Teenage Girls: Muslim Girl magazine, geared for 12- to 19-year-olds, “profiles professional women like BBC broadcast journalist Mishal Husain, shows off models sporting cute-yet-conservative clothes and offers specialized advice, such as how to deal with a crush in a culture that looks down on dating,” writes Michelle S. Keller in the Chicago Tribune. “I wanted to provide girls with an alternative to Cosmo Girl! and Seventeen, where they would see fun stories about popular culture but … also provide guidance and information to boost their self-esteem, develop their self-confidence,” said the magazine’s founder, Ausma Khan, a former lawyer who taught international human rights law at Northwestern University.

“New Face” of Cancer: “Just two decades ago, a breast cancer diagnosis was something a patient likely wouldn’t share beyond close family and friends. Even the word ‘cancer’ was barely spoken out loud. And no wonder: It raised immediate thoughts of a death sentence,” writes Jocelyn Noveck in the Washington Post. “So when Elizabeth Edwards greeted the waiting media with a smile, a frank account of her worsening illness and a declaration that her life would go on exactly as before, it was an important reminder to many in the cancer community of how far things had come — and how people like Edwards are representing a new face of the disease.”

Plus: See The New York Times story on Kay Yow, the Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach at North Carolina State who is battling Stage 4 breast cancer.

Are We There Yet?: Lucinda Marshall interviews Katha Pollitt about women’s equality and how the media influences perceptions of women. “Once you get rid of the idea that you can’t, or shouldn’t, do this or that because you’re a woman — whether it’s learning calculus or having an orgasm — the world gets a lot bigger, and a lot more interesting,” said Pollitt.