The New Lies About Women's Health

[MountainLaurel]

I'm glad to see this info coming from a publication like Glamour, which reaches a large mainstream audience of folks who probably aren't getting this info in Mother Jones or Utne. As a medical librarian, I struggle with some of the same issues about which resources I can trust.

http://www.glamour.com/features/healthandbody/articles/060403fewohe

For the past 15 years, Ruth Shaber, M.D., has been an ob-gyn in San Francisco for Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation's largest health maintenance organizations. She sees all types of women—union members, executives, waitresses. Most of them, Dr. Shaber says, have questions for her, including how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases, how to preserve their fertility, how to prevent breast and cervical cancer and whether the latest Internet health scare they've heard is really true.

Dr. Shaber tries hard to separate fact from fiction because, she says, "rumor and hearsay can start to seem real." In the past, she'd sometimes refer patients to government websites and printed fact sheets, or rely on those outlets to help create her own materials. Not anymore. "As a physician, I can no longer trust government sources," says Dr. Shaber. She is not a political activist or a conspiracy theorist; in addition to her own practice, she's Kaiser Permanente's director of women's health services for northern California and head of the HMO's Women's Health Research Institute. Yet this decidedly mainstream doctor and administrator says, "I no longer trust FDA decisions or materials generated . Ten years ago, I would not have had to scrutinize government information. Now I don't feel comfortable giving it to my patients."

Such doctor mistrust represents a major change. For the past 100 years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been the world's premier government agency ensuring drug safety. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have similarly stellar track records. But recently, Dr. Shaber charges, the government has lost its most precious asset: credibility.

How did it happen? Many prominent figures in science and public health think they know the answer. "People believe that religiously based social conservatives have direct lines to the powers that be within the U.S. government, the administration, Congress, and are influencing public-health policy, practice and research in ways that are unprecedented and very dangerous," says Judith Auerbach, Ph.D., a former NIH official who is now a vice president at the nonprofit American Foundation for AIDS Research. In fact, Glamour, has found that on issues ranging from STDs to birth control, some radical conservative activists have used fudged and sometimes flatly false data to persuade the government to promote their agenda of abstinence until marriage. The fallout: Young women now read false data on government websites, learn bogus information in federally funded sex-education programs and struggle to get safe, legal contraceptives—all of which, critics argue, may put them at greater risk for unplanned pregnancies and STDs.

[ThomCat]

1. The FDA has never been fully trustworth.

They allow Big Pharma too much influence in rushing drugs to approval. And, they allow additives and preservatives on the apparent presumption that they're safe.

We all know that Bush has gutted real science in government agencies. Unfortunately, it's no surprise that he's making the problems at the FDA far worse, and even more deadly.

[Warpy]

4. Right, but they've been a good watchdog organization

and put things on the GRAS list (Generally Regarded As Safe) only when they were grandfathered in by years of use before regulations were written.

Now the agency has been completely politicised at the top, and the top acts as a filter for what can and can't be said, approved, or disallowed. It's why Plan B is still not available over the counter, relgious posturing at the top.

The first duty of any administration that succeeds this one should be to remove all the appointments this administration has made to scientific agencies, to human services agencies, and to the state department.

These people are killing us. Literally.

[bliss_eternal]

2. I was pissed this weekend about this very issue...

I'm reading some nutrtion self-help books. One is a book on peri-menopause and treating it with nutrtition, another is called Ultra-prevention by two doctors that had major health issues during their careers, and now advocate many treatments that conventional medicine does not.

During the course of reading, I found out how much bunk the medical system as we know it has fed us--particularly women.

These days, it is really about learning the information and taking personal responsibility for our health and wellness. The system as it is is quite dysfunctional and very dependent on the pharmaceutical industry. Which for the most part is about keeping people sick... :eyes:

The whole thing is quite eye-opening, but it also makes me rather mad.

Thanks for posting this--got to get that Glamour, glad they wrote about this.

[NMMNG]

3. Gah!

I am so sick and tired of religious extremists trying to control women's bodies and damaging our health in the process. Because of these peoples' radical views, we are potentially denied access to abortion, birth control, "Plan B", HPV vaccinations, and factual information about our health and bodies. I am beyond fed up about this .