Stephen Colbert has it in for “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”

During an interview with Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America” this week to promote his upcoming TV special, “A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!” (Sunday, Nov. 23, 10 p.m. EST), the talk-show host announced he was burning our flagship book, often considered the bible of the women’s health movement.

“Is it true what I’ve heard, that you have a yule log with some books you’re burning?” Sawyer asked.

“Well, I had some books laying around,” replied Colbert, “and on the DVD we have an 18-minute video yule log of burning ‘Our Bodies Ourselves’ — you know, kindling.”

Despite the image of pages going up in flames in the cozy hearth, my heart still swoons.

Maybe it’s because Colbert’s medical analysis is so spot-on. Take his recent “Cheating Death with Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA.” Naturally we appreciate the skeleton clutching “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” but we also admire Colbert’s incisive analysis of pharmaceutical industry’s push to prescribe drugs to people who don’t need them.

The “Cheating Death” segment was inspired by the well-publicized JUPITER trial, which suggested that the cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor could prevent heart attacks in people with normal cholesterol levels who exhibit high levels of C-reactive protein. (Scientific American has a concise summary of the New England Journal of Medicine article, and the accompanying editorial by Mark Hlatky, a Stanford University health-policy professor who criticizes the scope of the study and questions the cost of expanding the use of statins.)

Colbert identifies the study’s most notable success: “This is a great breakthrough in the battle to find things to prescribe to people who don’t need them.”

That and other comments led Ivan Oransky to make a few suggestions concerning Colbert’s future that we here at OBOS enthusiastically support:

This is the kind of intellectual rigor that is — and I’ve removed my tongue from my cheek only somewhat — too frequently missing from news reporting on medical studies.

So I’d like to suggest that Colbert launch The Colbert Journal of Medicine. We might have some disagreements about the kind of scientists who would be his peers, to make the journal peer-reviewed. (We hear he has a bit of an ego.)

Dr. Colbert would have to disclose his own conflicts of interest. We’d need to know more, for example, about his relationship with Prescott Pharmaceuticals, which sponsors “Cheating Death.” After all, Prescott makes VaxaCrest, which increases cholesterol until “your heart is pumping liquid nacho cheese,” as Colbert informed us last night. But at least he’s comfortable disclosing potential side effects of his sponsor’s fare — in this case “fallopian tapeworm.”

He did have some trouble pronouncing “hormones” at one point. It came out “homones” (Ho-mones). So he may need some help presenting at meetings.

Or maybe we should just put his name forward for U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

If Colbert somehow gets the appointment, perhaps he’ll put his vendetta against my employer aside long enough to allow Judy Norsigian, OBOS co-founder and executive director, to take over the Office of Women’s Health.

Heck, we’d settle for the opportunity to go head-to-head with Colbert on “The Colbert Report.” There are plenty of topics concerning women’s health and politics Norsigian could discuss. And maybe she’d stop him from throwing more feminist titles on the yule log this season …

Click to watch Stephen Colbert discuss book burning on "Good Morning America"

“Our Bodies, Ourselves” was featured in the beginning of Dr. Stephen Colbert’s “Cheating Death” segment — a biting look at the overuse of costly pharmaceuticals and the medical relevance of the Bee Gees. Oh yes, Colbert covers it all. 

Just look at what the skeleton is holding up when Colbert mentions “women health” (without air quotes!).

This is as good (or better?) as when OBOS was featured in an episode of the first seaon of “Friday Night Lights.” Predictions on whose show we’ll end up on next? 

The New Health Insurance Model: In the first of a three-part series, the L.A. Times looks at the changing insurance scenario — where once working Americans could rely on employer-based benefits, now more people are being forced into the individual market, where coverage is costly, bare-bones and precarious.

Part two looks at the business side of managing health savings accounts, and part three covers the battle between doctors and insurers. Meanwhile, health care costs continue to rise.

Plus: Read more about how the individual health insurance market fails women. It’s a great report from the National Women’s Law Center.

No Candy or Condoms: Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy in Chantilly, Va., drew attention this week for becoming at least the seventh pharmacy in the United States to refuse to sell contraceptives of any kind, even if a person has a prescription. The decision, say owners, is guided by Roman Catholic teachings, though the pharmacy is not affiliated with the Catholic church. Still, it did receive a blessing from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde. From the AP:

“This pharmacy is a vibrant example of our Holy Father’s charge to all of us to wear our faith in the public square,” said Loverde, who sprinkled holy water on the shelves stocked with painkillers and acne treatments. “It will allow families to shop in an environment where their faith is not compromised.”

Too bad everyone can’t shop in an environment where their health is not compromised. In Virginia, pharmacists can turn away any prescription — for any reason.

Prop What?: Heather at Scarleteen gives a good overview of several important ballot measures that will be up for vote Nov. 4 in states from Arkansas to South Dakota, “such as parental notification laws for minors who want an abortion, age of consent laws, same-sex marriage, civil rights, stem cell research, education issues, even a proposal to lower the voting age for primaries in one state (whoohoo!) and another to ban abortion outright (grrrr).”

Plus: Look up ballot measures for your state here.

2009 Sheroes: Next year’s Sheroes Womyn Warriors calendar is now available for sale (check out the beautiful cover art by Ekua Holmes!). The calendar honors change agents, rebels, radicals and revolutionaries of different times and places around the globe.

“This is definitely not a ‘great women of history’ celebrity calendar,” reads the back cover. Instead, this is a calendar “of womyn who have challenged their societies and who have advanced the struggle of the oppressed and exploited.”

Proceeds support the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights at Simmons College.

Plus: Send in suggestions for who should be included in the 2010 calendar.

Seen But Not Heard: Jeannine Stein at the L.A. Times writes: “Researchers at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock interviewed eight overweight women ages 20 to 61 to learn about their experiences with the healthcare system, then published their findings in this month’s Journal of Advanced Nursing. During interviews about their experiences, four themes became apparent: struggling to fit in, feeling not quite human, being dismissed, and refusing to give up.”

Scary Sexy Costumes for Kids: “Halloween costumes are reflecting an increasingly sexualized childhood. They often reflect the stars and starlets and popular culture role models that girls have, starting with Disney princesses or Hannah Montana when girls are young. But even traditional favorites, like witches and pirates are sexier every year. And French maids are quite the thing for tweens and teens,” said Diane E. Levin in a Q&A about Halloween costumes and gender roles.

Levin is co-author with Jean Kilbourne of “So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids.”

Life’s Lessons: On the other side of what’s good for kids, “Free to Be You and Me,” which has never gone out of print since its 1973 debut, was reissued this month with a new, expanded edition, reports USA Today.

Jessica Reaves of the Chicago Tribune, who also made her debut in 1973, writes about the book’s appeal and the lessons that have remained incredibly relevant for more than three decades:

Some critics of “Free to Be” accused Thomas of advancing a radical feminist agenda. They pointed to the book’s co-producer (the Ms. Foundation for Women) and Thomas’ role on “That Girl,” the first television program to shamelessly promote the career girl lifestyle. (I mean, really: Ann Marie strung that poor Don along for four years before she finally agreed to marry him!)

As a feminist born into a family of feminists, I’m biased: I happen to think adopting a feminist agenda is the best thing that could ever happen to this country. (Trust me, it hasn’t happened yet.) But those long-ago critics were right about one thing. The witty, wise lessons of “Free to Be” do underscore feminism’s fundamental tenet: namely, that everyone — male, female, black, white, brown, young, old and in between — should be treated equally and empathetically. Yes, even the jerks.

You only need to glance at the headlines to know we’re not quite ready to cross that particular item off our collective to-do list. Which isn’t to say we haven’t learned a lot in the 35 years since “Free to Be” was published. It’s just that we may need another 35 years for it all to sink in.

It’s been years since I’ve seen playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith perform live (her recurring role on “West Wing” was also incredibly satisfying), and I was glad to come across a story about her play “Let Me Down Easy,” which recently concluded a one-month run at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass.

The fact that the story appeared in the health section of The New York Times might come as a surprise, but it makes perfect sense considering that a portion of the play is about health care and the relationships between doctors and patients.

In all of her works, Smith exposes the nuanced lives of the characters she assumes. The stories are based on extensive interviews, and the results are honest, compelling and complex. Such intimacy invites intense discussion and engagement, long after the final curtain. Describing some of Smith’s roles in “Let Me Down Easy,” Pauline W. Chen, M.D., writes:

Ms. Smith plays a young doctor who stayed behind at Charity Hospital in New Orleans during Katrina, in awe of the dignity of her African-American patients but angry that their predictions of being rescued last would indeed come true.

Later she’s a patient who at first seems cantankerous in refusing dialysis, only to reveal she remains haunted by memories of the undignified way in which her daughter, suffering from AIDS, was discharged from the hospital, wrapped in her own blood-soaked sheets.

Then she transforms into a physician who laments a U.S. health care system that cannot offer even basic preventive care, and who as a medical school dean somehow feels responsible.

I recently asked Ms. Smith about listening, about what all of us, as patients and doctors, might learn from her experiences interviewing and listening over the last 30 years. [...]

Sitting in the audience that night, I had thought I was listening. But I wasn’t getting out of the way of what I was hearing. I couldn’t help but hear my own internal voice, sifting the stories Ms. Smith told: Do I agree with what that character is saying? Do I know this character? What’s up with that character’s hands?

But then Ms. Smith became Ingrid Inema, a Stanford pre-med student from Rwanda. The character, a young woman, looked lost on stage, sitting next to a great pile of books, her face partly obscured by a baseball cap. But her voice was clear. She talked about living through the genocide in her country, about not being able to forgive because the perpetrators have never come to ask for forgiveness. And about how she decided to let go.

“I release you,” I can still hear Ingrid saying, her voice resonating out from the darkness of the stage. “I am not holding you in my heart anymore.”

Chen goes on to discuss audience responses to the question posed in the theater lobby: What does grace mean to you? She offers examples from her medical profession of moments of grace between doctors and patients; readers can do the same at this related blog post. You can also listen to Chen’s conversation with Smith about listening.

Smith’s next work looks to be equally compelling. It’s called “The Arizona Project,” and it debuts Nov. 5 in Phoenix. Here’s a summary:

The Arizona Project presents the stories of Justice O’Connor, as well as those of more than 30 women with relationships to the American judicial system, including prison system employees,incarcerated women, female lawyers, activists and others. The Arizona Project touches upon several contemporary issues through these diverse personal stories, including immigration, domestic violence, and the challenges faced by women living on Native American reservations.

Slavery Overlooked: “World leaders are parading through New York this week for a United Nations General Assembly reviewing their (lack of) progress in fighting global poverty. That’s urgent and necessary, but what they aren’t talking enough about is one of the grimmest of all manifestations of poverty — sex trafficking,” writes columnist Nicholas Kristof, who had doggedly stayed on this issue (view related columns here).

“This is widely acknowledged to be the 21st-century version of slavery, but governments accept it partly because it seems to defy solution,” Kristof continues. “Prostitution is said to be the oldest profession. It exists in all countries, and if some teenage girls are imprisoned in brothels until they die of AIDS, that is seen as tragic but inevitable.”

Kristof goes on to detail the work of Somaly Mam, a survivor of the Cambodian brothels who now leads the Somaly Mam Foundation.

Plus: “For the U.S. to be a significant part of the solution that elevates the status of women and all that such progress entails, our foreign policy has to start dealing with the realities of women’s lives instead of attempting to legislate morality,” writes Anika Rahman at RH Reality Check.

Sarah Palin and the Rape Kits: We’ve been writing for weeks about how Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin approved cutting funding from the Wasilla police budget when she was mayor, leaving sexual assault victims holding the bill for their own forensic exams. Well, Dorothy Samuels of The New York Times is now also outraged.

“Ms. Palin owes voters an explanation. What was the thinking behind cutting the measly few thousand dollars needed to cover the yearly cost of swabs, specimen containers and medical tests?” asks Samuels. Wouldn’t we all love to know.

Congress Approves Mental Health Parity: Congress approved legislation this week requiring private insurers to provide the same level of benefits for mental illness as they do for physical maladies, reports the Washington Post. But we’re not home yet, as Lindsey Layton explains:

The measure has received strong bipartisan support in the House and Senate and has the backing of business, insurance companies, health advocates, the medical community and the White House. But its passage into law was not ensured last night.

The remaining obstacle appeared to be ironing out differences in how to pay the cost to the federal government — estimated at $3.4 billion over 10 years, in the form of forgone tax revenue. Lawmakers also needed to resolve whether the final bill should be a standalone measure or part of a larger package of legislation.

The House approved the language in a standalone bill, while the Senate wrapped it into a $150 billion package of popular tax cuts, including a one-year patch for the alternative minimum tax, and extensions of expiring tax provisions including tuition credits and state and local sales tax deductions (for states that do not have an income tax), as well as research and development tax credits.

It is unclear whether a joint agreement can be reached in the few days remaining before Congress recesses.

Plus: Read how David Wellstone has been lobbying for the mental health parity bill, which would be his father’s legacy. The Wellstone-Dominici legislation is named after the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) and retiring Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.).

D.C. to Publicize HIV-AIDS Epidemic: Washington, D.C. has one of the highest rates of people living with AIDS among major U.S. cities and the highest rate of new reports of AIDS. Now the city is stepping up with a large-scale “social marketing” campaign to publicize these facts, according to the Washington Post.

Almost 12,500 people in the District were known to have HIV or AIDS in 2006, the most recent year of statistics available. HIV was spread through heterosexual contact in 37 percent of the cases, compared with 25 percent of the cases attributed to men having sex with men — the most common mode of transmission nationally.

New reports of AIDS in the District were coming in at the rate of 128 per 100,000, in contrast to 14 cases per 100,000 nationally. One in 50 residents is thought to have the disease.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the District has the highest rate of AIDS among African Americans in the country: 277.5 for every 100,000 people. It also has the highest rate of new cases reported among Hispanics: 109.2 for every 100,000 people.

This week the DC Appleseed Center released its fourth “report card” that grades the progress of the D.C. government in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Why Don’t the Candidates Speak Out on HIV?: “When news hit that another Wall Street financial institution was on the verge of collapse, the response from rivals Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama was swift.  Both candidates issued statements touting their respective economic plans.  What kind of impact could our presidential candidates make if they responded as quickly to the domestic and global HIV/AIDS crisis?” writes Pamea Merritt at RH Reality Check.

Merritt looks at how presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain have (and have not) addressed the global and domestic HIV/AIDS crisis …

Forward Thinking from Louisiana State Rep: “Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied,” reports The Times-Picayune.

And it gets even better. He wants to give tax-incentives to women with higher incomes to have more children.

LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government. He said he is gathering statistics now.

“What I’m really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare, ” he said.

He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.

It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.

Plus: Feministing has more.

Drug Makers to Report Fees Paid to Doctors: “Amid a national debate over the influence of industry money on medical research and practice, two pharmaceutical giants say they will begin publicly reporting payments they make to outside doctors,” reports The New York Times. Benedict Carey writes:

John C. Lechleiter, chief executive of Eli Lilly & Company, announced on Wednesday that starting next year it intended to post in an online database all its payments to doctors for speaking and consulting services. The postings will “likely include” the names of the doctors, or will provide some other identifying information about them, along with the reason for the payments, the company said.

In the wake of Lilly’s announcement, Merck & Company said later Wednesday that it would disclose speaking fees it pays to doctors, also beginning in 2009.

Members of Congress have been pushing for a national registry of such payments. In the last year and a half, Senate investigations have found that prominent researchers at several institutions, including Harvard and the University of Cincinnati, failed to report millions of dollars in outside income from drug makers, contrary to the institutions’ reporting requirements.

Wait to See Doctors Grows in Mass.: “The wait to see primary care doctors in Massachusetts has grown to as long as 100 days, while the number of practices accepting new patients has dipped in the past four years, with care the scarcest in some rural areas,” writes Liz Kowalczyk in the Boston Globe.

“Now, as the state’s health insurance mandate threatens to make a chronic doctor shortage worse, the Legislature has approved an unprecedented set of financial incentives for young physicians, and other programs to attract primary care doctors. But healthcare leaders fear the new measures will take several years to ease the shortage.”

Play Addresses Birth Control & Other Taboos: I haven’t listened to today’s “Talk of the Nation” yet, but I will — check out the description of the 17-minute segment:

Famous for his work on the first oral contraceptive in 1951, chemist Carl Djerassi has published a number of novels and plays over the last 20 years. His latest play, Taboos, grapples with the questions of sex divorced from reproduction.

Plus: “All Things Considered” had a good report today (text available) on the proposed HHS rule on “physician conscience.” The report notes that the “Bush administration this week received tens of thousands of comments on a controversial rule that demonstrates that even it its waning days, the administration continues to have a major impact on policy.” Comments are now closed.

The publication of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” made Health magazine’s list of best and worst moments in women’s health — as one of the best moments, of course.

Here’s what Stephanie Dolgoff wrote:

Women finally get straight talk about their bodies
If you need to know something about your body, what do you do? Look it up, of course. But before 1970 there weren’t any good resources. That year a group of Boston women published a stapled-together booklet — the precursor to Our Bodies, Ourselves — and fueled the burgeoning idea that women should be full participants in their medical care. Three years later, the radical publication (which discussed such issues as sexuality and birth control) was beefed up and released by Simon & Schuster. It’s now in its eighth edition.

Very cool.

Other standouts: After realizing that what works for white men doesn’t necessarily work for the rest of us, the National Institutes of Health in 1993 started including more women and minorities in clinical trials. And tubal litigation is now a real option. Dolgoff describes when it wasn’t:

Until 1969, a woman couldn’t elect to have her tubes tied unless she fit a formula — her age multiplied by the number of children she’d delivered had to equal 120 or more. (What that means: If you were 30 years old, you would have to have had four kids before a doctor would have agreed that you’d done your share of “women’s work” and sterilized you, unless another pregnancy would have posed a health risk.)

Though the list is supposed to cover “highs and lows in the last 20 years of female wellness,” a number of “best moments” are from older decades — in the case of the tampon’s development in 1929, much older. And some might be remembered more as milestones in popular culture that led to a greater acceptance of women’s health issues: Judy Blume novels (swoon); Edith Bunker going through menopause on “All in the Family” in 1972 — or to a greater respect for women’s physical abilities: U.S. women winning the World Cup in soccer in 1999 and Billie Jean King defeating Bobby Riggs in “The Battle of the Sexes.”

On the more medical side, there are a couple of items that deserve a closer look — such as the FDA in 1960 declaring birth control pills safe for women. It’s great that we have the pill, but it took the work of health activists like Barbara Seaman to improve their safety.

The FDA’s approval of Gardasil, the first vaccine introduced to prevent cervical cancer, also deserves an asterisk. While Gardasil’s approval was met with great fanfare, the distribution and cost has come under scrutiny, and researchers have raised doubts, most notably in the New England Journal of Medicine, about whether Gardasil and another vaccine, Cervarix, will ultimately reduce rates of cervical cancer (read the articles here and here).

Dolgoff nailed the “seven lows in women’s health.” The list includes the refusal of pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception (Plan B), forced sterilization of women of color, and the Virginia Slims campaign — “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” — that co-opted feminism in the name of promoting lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases.

My only question is: Why only seven? Many other “worst” moments come to mind, including misinformation about hormone replacement therapy and the Global Gag Rule.

So readers, what other best or worst moments would you add to the list?

Quote of the Week: “The “new feminism” may include uncritical support for women who oppose teen pregnancy programs and for women who force rape victims to pay for their own rape kits. But I just don’t see where support for women who persist in fabricating their own records is a feminist principle.” — Dahlia Lithwick

Quote of the Week, Part 2: “In this strange new pro-woman tableau, feminism — a word that is being used all over the country with regard to Palin’s potential power — means voting for someone who would limit reproductive control, access to healthcare and funding for places like Covenant House Alaska, an organization that helps unwed teen mothers. It means cheering someone who allowed women to be charged for their rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla, who supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, who has inquired locally about the possibility of using her position to ban children’s books from the public library, who does not support the teaching of sex education [...] Stop the election; I want to get off.” — Rebecca Traister

Plus: More on those rape kits …

Website of the Week: Women Against Sarah Palin

Take On Dr. Phil’s Take on Home Births: We’ve heard from several readers that Dr. Phil is soliciting home-birth horror stories on his website for an upcoming show. Perhaps hearing from some satisfied home birthers will lead to a more balanced program. Also see this related call for pregnant women considering a home birth.

It’s Fall, So Viewers Must be Gawking at Fat People: The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley recently covered the growing number of weight-loss television programs — “binge viewing for a nation obsessed with weight” — and the cultural implications. A sampling: “Bulging Brides” on WE; “The Biggest Loser” on NBC; and “Honey We’re Killing the Kids,” among others …

Plus: Writing at AfterEllen.com, Reese DoWitt questions the saneness of MTV’s “Model Makers,” a proposed reality TV series in which 15 wannabe-models have to slim down to win the show’s $100,000 grand prize.

And Richard Perez-Pena, also of NYT, notes that “The Biggest Loser” is a big win for Rodale and its biggest magazine, Prevention, which have collaborated with the series for the past three years.

Taking Cheerleading Seriously: “A growing body of evidence indicates cheerleading has become one of the riskiest athletic activities for women, leaving a long trail of sprained wrists, twisted ankles, damaged knees, strained backs — and sometimes much worse,” writes Rob Stein in the Washington Post.

Despite a sharp increase in the number and types of cheerleading squads and the complexity of their routines, cheerleading is not officially considered a sport at most high schools and universities. As a result, it’s not subject to the safety regulations that apply to gymnastics, for example.

“When people think about cheerleading, they think about the girls with the pompoms jumping up and down,” said Frederick O. Mueller, a leading sports injury expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “They don’t think about someone being thrown 25 feet in the air and performing flips with twists and other risky stunts we see today.”

Equally shocking are the cheerleading proponents quoted who seem in denial about the risks. It’s a sport, folks, not an after-school club, and should be regulated like any other official athletic activity.

Facing Deportation and Fleeing Domestic Abuse: Women’s eNews reports on the mass arrest this summer of undocumented workers in Rhode Island that left a number of abused women fearing their deportations will put them back within reach of abusers they fled. A longstanding case pending in San Francisco could set a new precedent, reports Amy Littlefield.

What About the Children?: Writing at Huffington Post, Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, discusses the effect of immigration raids on children. A report by the National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute, “Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children,” notes that there are about five million children in the United States with at least one undocumented parent.

Ensuring the Human Right to Survive Pregnancy in Southeast Asia: A meeting of world leaders later this month to discuss progress on the Millennium Development Goals “presents a decisive opportunity to ensure that the limited progress on maternal mortality is at the center of the dialogue,” writes Ramona Vijeyarasa at RH Reality Check. “2005 maternal mortality ratio estimates released by WHO were as high as 540 maternal deaths per 100,000 lives births for Cambodia, 420 for Indonesia and 230 for the Philippines as compared to 14 for the Republic of Korea or 11 for the United States.”

Study: Delivery Method Affects Brain Response to Newborn’s Cries: “When my own daughter was born by Caesarean section delivery, I was surprised how uninvolved I was in the process. My body was numb, and my view of the surgery was blocked by a sheet. When I finally heard a baby cry, it took a minute for me to realize that the sound belonged to my own baby,” writes Tara Parker-Pope at Well.

“That’s why I was particularly interested to read of new research showing that the method of delivery seems to influence how a mother’s brain responds to the cries of her own baby. The brains of women who have natural childbirth appear to be more responsive to the cries of their own babies, compared to the brains of women who have C-section births.”

The very small study (12 women), which was published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, draws strong responses at the Well blog.

When an Apple is Harder to Find than French Fries: “You can’t choose healthy foods if you don’t have access to them. And that’s the dilemma faced by millions of residents in the ‘Food Deserts’ of America,” writes Mari Gallagher, a researcher and author of the 2006 study “Examining the Impact of Food Deserts on Public Health in Chicago,” as well as similar studies in Detroit, rural Michigan, Louisville, Harlem and Richmond.

Food deserts are geographic areas lacking in grocery stores and awash in fast-food restaurants. Read more here.

Flesh-Eating Fish Perform “Pedicures”: See what shows up in my in-box from NPR?

Drug Makers’ Push Leads to Cancer Vaccines’ Rise: “In two years, cervical cancer has gone from obscure killer confined mostly to poor nations to the West’s disease of the moment,” begins this lengthy New York Times story by Elisabeth Rosenthal about concerns over the rapid rollout of vaccines against HPV, which have now been used by tens of millions of girls and young women in the United States and Europe.

Some of the issues raised:

Merck’s vaccine was studied in clinical trials for five years, and Glaxo’s for nearly six and a half, so it is not clear how long the protection will last. Some data from the clinical trials indicate immune molecules may wane after three to five years. If a 12-year-old is vaccinated, will she still be protected in college, when her risk of infection is higher? Or will a booster vaccine be necessary?

Some experts are concerned about possible side effects that become apparent only after a vaccine has been more widely tested over longer periods.

And why the sudden alarm in developed countries about cervical cancer, some experts ask. A major killer in the developing world, particularly Africa, where the vaccines are too expensive for use, cervical cancer is classified as very rare in the West because it is almost always preventable through regular Pap smears, which detect precancerous cells early enough for effective treatment. Indeed, because the vaccines prevent only 70 percent of cervical cancers, Pap smear screening must continue anyway.

“Merck lobbied every opinion leader, women’s group, medical society, politicians, and went directly to the people — it created a sense of panic that says you have to have this vaccine now,” said Dr. Diane Harper, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Harper was a principal investigator on the clinical trials of both Gardasil and Cervarix, and she spent 2006-7 on sabbatical at the World Health Organization developing plans for cervical cancer vaccine programs around the world.

“Because Merck was so aggressive, it went too fast,” Dr. Harper said. “I would have liked to see it go much slower.”

Plus: In a separate story, Rosenthal refers to two articles published in New England Journal of Medicine that conclude the vaccines are being used without knowing for sure that they are worth the high cost or if they are effective in preventing cervical cancer. Read the articles here and here.

HHS Fails to Deliver on Contraception/Conscience Proposal: “The Department of Health and Human Services today formally released proposed regulations that Secretary Michael Leavitt claims are necessary to protect health care providers and institutions who decline to provide certain medical services because those services offend their ‘consciences,’” writes Emily Douglas at RH Reality Check.

“After intense criticism in the mainstream media and from millions of Americans, HHS has removed an explicit redefinition of contraception as abortion from the regulation. In so doing, the agency may have created a much larger problem.”

Plus: Here’s the official version of the regulation, and Rachel’s previous writings on this topic.

Birth of a Movement: “Last month, a seven-judge appellate panel in Pennsylvania ruled that delivering babies is not the practice of medicine. It’s always comforting when the law catches up to history; midwifery is, after all, the second-oldest profession,” writes Roberta Devers-Scott, a Vermont midwife and psychologist who has written an op-ed about the prosecution of midwives, including her own case.

Health Care is the Issue:  Judy Waxman, vice president and director of health and reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center, identifies seven questions to ask when looking at health reform proposals to determine whether the proposals help to ensure that all women have access to health care that meets their needs.

The Future of Personalized Medicine: View a webcast of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s series Today’s Topics In Health Disparities, which discusses the potential of race-based medical solutions for improving healthcare and reducing racial/ethnic health disparities. The webcast takes a closer look at efforts to study the interaction between race, genetics and health.

Spinach With a Side of Radiation: “Consumers worried about salad safety may soon be able to buy fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce zapped with just enough radiation to kill E. coli and a few other germs,” reports the AP. “The Food and Drug Administration on Friday will issue a regulation allowing spinach and lettuce sellers to take that extra step, a long-awaited move amid increasing outbreaks from raw produce.”

A leading food safety expert said irradiation indeed can kill certain bacteria safely — but it doesn’t kill viruses that also increasingly contaminate produce, and it isn’t as effective as tightening steps to prevent contamination starting at the farm.

“It won’t control all hazards on these products,” cautioned Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

She questioned why the FDA hasn’t addressed her agency’s 2006 call to require growers to document such things as how they use manure and ensure the safety of irrigation water. Irrigation is one suspect in this summer’s nationwide salmonella outbreak attributed first to tomatoes and then to Mexican hot peppers.

“We are not opposed to the use of irradiation,” DeWaal said. But, “it’s expensive and it doesn’t really address the problem at the source.”

The Claim: Morning Sickness Means a Girl Is More Likely: “The notion that morning sickness can sometimes indicate that a girl is on the way may be an exception,” to a number of old wives tales about pregnancy that are based more on fantasy than fact, reports The New York Times. “A number of large studies in various countries have examined the claim, and almost all have found it to be true, with caveats. Specifically, studies have found that it applies to women with morning sickness in the first trimester, and with symptoms so severe that it leads to hospitalization, a condition known as hyperemesis gravidarum.”

A True Love Story: “I’m completely smitten with WALL•E, this summer’s Pixar/Disney offering. But the last thing I expected to see in my friendly, heterosexual upper east side Manhattan neighborhood movie theater was a feature length cartoon about a pair of lesbian robots who fall madly in love with each other,” writes Kate Bornstein. “WALL•E is nothing short of hot, dyke Sci Fi action romance, some seven hundred years in the future! Woo-hoo! Isn’t that what you saw? No? What movie were you watching?” Hee. via en|Gender.

I’m driving back from California to Chicago, and while on the road this week I’ve caught TV news programs I don’t normally watch — like way too much Headline News. But while flipping through channels Wednesday morning I was thrilled to see feminist media critic Jean Kilbourne and education professor Diane Levin on The Today Show discussing their new book, “So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids.”

While stories about the hypersexualization of young girls is nothing new, feminist analysis of this issue is too rare. Despite the over-use of Madonna in the background and many basic questions, Kilbourne and Levin manage to make good points about the images being more pervasive than ever and how this affects boys attitudes toward girls.

Levin also brings up representations of masculinity. “Seeing images of being violent, tough and macho also goes against being able to have caring, connected relationships when they grow up,” she said.

And while the discussion is brief, Levin does mention the role of television deregulation in the 1980s, which led to the explosion of marketing to young children on television.

What’s most refreshing is that the authors talk about getting beyond the “just say no” approach to popular culture and instead insist that parents engage in real discussion that connects with their child’s interests. It’s not as easy as shouting, “Turn that *&%$ off!” but it’s important that young people learn critical analysis early on.

Here’s an interview with Levin and Kilbourne and an excerpt from chapter one. Video of their appearance on The Today Show is available below.

On the Road: I’m posting from Kansas, on the way from Chicago to South Lake Tahoe … If anyone has suggestions for good food/must-see stops convenient to I-70, I’d love to hear from you! (My recommendation for Kansas City: Blue Nile Cafe and a super funky coffee house in the Crossroads Arts District — argh! what was the name! — that made our morning with a yummy veggie breakfast sandwich.) Rachel will be doing some extra blog posts next week, and I’ll be back Aug. 7. Have a great end of July!

Botox for Bridesmaids: Seriously …? The New York Times has found a new “skin deep” trend: “It is no longer sufficient to hire a hairstylist and makeup artist to be on hand the day of. Instead, bridal parties are indulging in dermal fillers and tooth-whitening months before the Big Day,” writes Abby Ellin.

Some brides pick up the tab for their attendants, replacing the pillbox inscribed with the wedding date with a well-earned squirt between the eyes. In other cases, bridesmaids — who may quietly seethe about unflattering dresses — are surprisingly willing to pay for cosmetic enhancements. “Most women, when they come in here, they want it,” said Camille Meyer, the owner of TriBeCa MedSpa. “They know they’re aging.”

For Karen Hohenstein, who held her party at the Tiffani Kim Institute Medical Wellness Spa in Chicago, convincing her friends was as smooth as a Botoxed forehead. “It wasn’t me saying, ‘Hey, we all could use a little something,’” she said. “It was, ‘I want to do this,’ and a couple of people said, ‘I do, too.’”

But for every accommodating pal, there’s another who feels going under the knife is beyond the duty of bridesmaid. Becky Lee, 39, a Manhattan photographer, declined when a friend asked her — and five other attendants — to have their breasts enhanced. “We’re all Asian and didn’t have a whole lot of cleavage, and she found a doctor in L.A. who was willing to do four for the price of two,” said Ms. Lee, who wore a push-up bra instead.

Plus: Why Brides-to-Be Are Starving Themselves Skinny

Hospitals Work to Get Healthier With New Design: “With hospital-acquired infections claiming more American lives each year than AIDS, breast cancer or automobile accidents, it seems the very facilities built to heal us have themselves become dangerous places,” writes Lisa Zamosky in the L.A. Times. “Two million patients each year suffer from a hospital-acquired infection, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say, and nearly 100,000 of them die as a result. Architects believe that doesn’t have to be the case.”

No More Trans Fats in CA: California on Friday became the first state to ban trans fats from restaurant food, following the lead of cities like New York, Philadelphia and Seattle, reports the AP.

The legislation signed by Schwarzenegger will take effect Jan. 1, 2010, for oil, shortening and margarine used in spreads or for frying. Restaurants could continue using trans fats to deep-fry yeast dough and in cake batter until Jan. 1, 2011.

Trans fats occur naturally in small amounts in meat and dairy products. Most trans fats are created when vegetable oil is treated with hydrogen to create baked and fried goods with a longer shelf life.

Stephen Joseph, a Tiburon attorney who was a consultant to New York City in developing its ban, said trans fat is a larger health risk than saturated fat because it reduces so-called good cholesterol.

A 2006 review of trans fat studies by the New England Journal of Medicine concluded there was a strong connection between consumption of trans fats and heart disease. Studies also have linked trans fats to diabetes, obesity, infertility in women and some types of cancer.

Gaming’s Big Picture: Blogging at Feministe, Holly, who designs video games for a living, writes about the reaction to and defenses of the new game “Fat Princess.” While the narrative is a send-up of damsel-in-distress games, “there are a lot of ways you could send up that cliche, but of all the possibilities, Titan chose to make the princess FAT,” writes Holly.

“The joke here is also obvious: LOL who would want to rescue a fat chick? It’s a shtick that’s been used in animation and film plenty of times; the dashing hero thinks he’s rescuing a beautiful damsel in distress, but the ‘joke’ is on him because it turns out she’s larger than acceptable! And therefore unattractive and a horrible burden for him to rescue, of course.” Read more.

McCain’s War on Women: “McCain’s campaign has been making a clear play for women voters in recent weeks, hosting conference calls with Republican women and touting that his policies on national security, the economy and healthcare appeal to women voters,” writes Kate Shepard at In These Times. “But the suggestion that women — and feminist women, at that — will be lining up behind him is a fairytale. At least, it should be. McCain’s record and policies on issues of importance to women are neither moderate nor maverick.” — A very good round-up of McCain’s voting record.

What We Want to Hear: In this well-crafted video, RH Reality Check’s Amanda Marcotte surveys attendees of the 2008 Netroots Nation conference about their views on reproductive health and politics. Yes, it’s a self-selected group of progressives, but it’s still nice to hear smart talk on the topic.

Plus: View highlights of the Netroots Nation panel featuring Marcela Howell, Amanda Marcotte, and Eesha Pandit discussing ways to use language to overcome the powerful framing devices commonly used by opponents of reproductive health.

Health Care for All: Progressive Democrats of America is seeking signatures for its Statement in Support of Universal Health Care as a plank in the Democratic Party Platform of 2008. Rep. John Conyers, co-author of the statement, was the first Democratic National Convention delegate to sign on.

Domestic Violence Memo: Over a thousand U.S. women are killed each year by a current or former intimate partner. Two million a year are injured. A sexual assault occurs every two minutes. Read the “memo” — fifth in series on the status of U.S. women that Women’s eNews wants to deliver to the candidates.

Test of Justice for Rape Victims: “Every year, more than 200,000 rape victims, mostly women, report their rapes to police. Most consent to the creation of a rape kit, an invasive process for collecting physical evidence (including DNA material) of the assault that can take up to six hours. What most victims don’t know is that in thousands of cases, that evidence sits untested in police evidence lockers,” writes Sarah Tofte, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, in this Washington Post column.

Wide Disparities in Health Care by Race and Region: “Race and place of residence can have a staggering impact on the course and quality of the medical treatment a patient receives, according to new research showing that blacks with diabetes or vascular disease are nearly five times more likely than whites to have a leg amputated and that women in Mississippi are far less likely to have mammograms than those in Maine,” reports The New York Times.

The study was conducted by researchers at Dartmouth and was commissioned by the nation’s largest health-related philanthropy, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which announced a three-year, $300 million initiative intended to narrow health care disparities across lines of race and geography.

Repairing the Damage, Before Roe: “With the Supreme Court becoming more conservative, many people who support women’s right to choose an abortion fear that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that gave them that right, is in danger of being swept aside,” writes Waldo L. Fielding in this op-ed. “When such fears arise, we often hear about the pre-Roe ‘bad old days.’ Yet there are few physicians today who can relate to them from personal experience. I can.” Read on.

Legal Effects of Marriage for Same-Sex Couples: The San Francisco Chronicle has a comprehensive run-down of the legal and financial changes same-sex couples face if they get married in California.

Plus: What happens to the status of couples already married if the November initiative to ban same-sex marriage passes? Expect heavy litigation and a decision ultimately decided by the California Supreme Court, says UCLA law professor Brad Sears.

Paying for Health Care in Retirement - Good Luck: “I write about health care, and still the realization hit me like a ton of bricks today after I put down a just-released report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. None of the presidential candidates have been talking about how to fix Medicare," writes Judith Graham at the Chicago Tribune.

Here’s the sobering EBRI report (PDF), effectively titled: “Savings Needed to Fund Health Insurance and Health Care Expenses in Retirement: Findings from a Simulation Model.”

On Becoming a Woman: In case you were looking for some, er, real-life advice, Blinky has excerpts from this 1950’s guide. Here’s analysis from Echidne, who calls it “a fascinating trip into the sexual politics of the past.”

“On the other hand,” she adds, “almost everything in those excerpts is advocated in this country somewhere, right this very moment. Abstinence is the responsibility of girls, for example. Women gentle and home-directed while men are strong and outer-directed? I was just told this by a liberal guy.”

Speaking of Abstinence: The National Abstinence Education Association has launched a $1 million campaign to recruit 1 million parents to “lobby local schools to adopt sex education programs focusing on abstinence and to work to elect local, state and national officials who support the approach,” reports the Washington Post.

The campaign comes as Congress is debating whether to authorize about $190 million in federal funding for such programs, which have come under increasing criticism because of a series of reports that concluded they are ineffective. Such criticism has prompted at least 17 states to refuse federal funding for such programs.

The group hopes to counter that trend, in part with a provocative video that asserts that comprehensive sex education encourages sexual activity by teenagers and a Web site that offers advice to parents about sex education.

Plus: Five days later, the same WaPo reporter, Rob Stein, wrote a page-one story about a new study by the Centers for Disease Control that found “a decade-long decline in sexual activity among high school students leveled off between 2001 and 2007, and that the rise in condom use by teens flattened out in 2003.”

The new figures renewed the heated debate about sex-education classes that focus on abstinence until marriage, which began receiving federal funding during the period covered by the latest survey and have come under increasing criticism that they are ineffective.

“Since we’ve started pushing abstinence, we have seen no change in the numbers on sexual activity,” said John Santelli, chairman of the department of population and family health at Columbia University. “The other piece of it is: Abstinence education spends a good amount of time bashing condoms. So it’s not surprising, if that’s the message young people are getting, that we’re seeing condom use start to decrease.”

Not surprisingly, proponents of abstinence-only programs blamed comprehensive sex-ed.

Hands Up if You’ve Experienced Street Harassment: The F-Word is gathering comments here, in response to comments here.

Breast Cancer News from ASCO Conference: Several breast cancer-related studies presented at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago are summarized here by Daily Women’s Health Policy Report. Meeting abstracts from the conference are available here.

Eat Locally, Think …: “The local food movement typically has been about improving the health of the planet,”