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The material in this site is provided for educational and informational purposes only, and is not intended to be a substitute for a health care provider's consultation. Please consult your own appropriate health care provider about the applicability of any opinions or recommendations with respect to your own symptoms or medical conditions. |
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Is This Any Way to Have a Baby?
Thousands of women are taking fertility drugs, but no one is telling them they're putting their lives on the line. Barbara Seaman -- the reporter who alerted the world to the dangers of birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy – investigated the risks of pushing the reproductive envelope. More...
"$20,000 for eggs." The ad in my Barnard College newspaper definitely caught my attention. It was posted by an infertile couple looking for a Jewish Ivy League student with good SAT scores. Although I was tempted, I decided not to respond...
Joanna Perlman a researcher and writer in New York City questions the safety of fertility procedures and whether clinics using the potent fertility drug Lupron are aware the drug has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). More...
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Fat or fiction?
By Cordelia Lockett, NZ Listener December 2003
Are we really in the grip of an "obesity epidemic"? In a society already very confused about body image and neurotic about personal health, maybe it's time to weigh up the evidence behind these claims.
Its reaching epidemic proportions. There seems to be a new one each week. Over the last three months alone we’ve had a swathe of them reported in the press - shoplifting, alcohol consumption, methamphetamine, overwork, diabetes, meningitis, schizophrenia, among others. Yes, we’re in the midst of an epidemic of …… epidemics. More... |
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Pharmaceutical companies accused of manipulating drug trials for profit.
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor, Independent (U.K.)
23 April 2004
The multibillion-dollar global pharmaceutical industry is accused of manipulating the results of drug trials for financial gain and withholding information that could expose patients to the risk of harm. More... |
Dairy monsters by Anne Karpf
Saturday December 13, 2003 The Guardian
We used to take it for granted that milk was good for us. But now the industry faces a crisis, with the public questioning such assumptions. So just how healthy is milk? According to various studies, there's a whole catalogue of other illnesses that can be attributed to cows' milk — among them diabetes. And there is the prevailing myth that milk will keep osteoporosis at bay. Anne Karpf reveals another whole side to the dairy industry in two brilliant articles on The Guardian website. Part 1 Part 2
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The Pill and I: 40 Years On, the Relationship Remains Wary
Women’s health icon and journalist Barbara Seaman wrote this article in 2000 for the New York Times on the 40th anniversary of the oral contraceptive pill. It is a moving account of the history of the Pill in the United States including a description of the Senate action she and her colleagues underwent in 1970 to have women informed of the dangers of the Pill. These were the days when only a minority of women were warned by their doctors about its side effects and the heroic efforts of these pioneer activists were effective in reducing the death rate from Pill-associated blood clots. |
She writes that even though the Pill is safer these days than it was back then, some troubling questions remain. “The jury, in my opinion, is still out on the relationship of the Pill to breast cancer, infertility and high blood pressure, and we are only beginning to learn about some of its toxic interactions with other common drugs, like some antidepressants”. She concludes “even at the very lowest doses, any hormonal contraceptive is, in some sense, tampering with nature, and is bound to cause some . . . dislocations.”
Barbara Seaman became interested in women's medicine in 1960, after her doctor ordered formula for her baby instead of breast milk. Appalled at his preference for a synthetic substitute, she wrote an article for the magazine Mother's Manual, defending her rights as a patient and mother. This sparked her career as a health writer, and Seaman has since published The Doctors' Case Against the Pill (Hunter House) and The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women (Hyperion), both about hormone drugs. Barbara Seaman was a cofounder of the national Women’s Health Network She lives in New York City. More...
Silent Epidemics: Breast Cancer, Endometriosis and Chemical Sensitivity
Evidence is growing that persistent organic pollutants (POPs) namely dioxins, PCBs, DDT, 24-D, DES, delivered to us via fuel emissions, incineration, household products, pesticides, cosmetics, glues, chemical sunscreens, plastic food containers and so on, are linked to endometriosis, breast and uterine cancers, heart disease, migraine, severe PMS, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibrocystic breast disease, fibroids and infertility.
At a recent Wellington New Zealand Green Party-hosted forum Greenpeace International scientist Pat Costner, environmental health researcher Meriel Watts, and Wellington gynaecologist Hanifa Koya, warned that many of the chemicals used widely in New Zealand and elsewhere have been identified as mammary carcinogens. Evidence from animal and human studies show that dioxin and other compounds are risk factors for breast cancer and endometriosis because of their ability to disrupt immune and endocrine system function, while pesticides and solvents are the key causes of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS).
Breast cancer rates have doubled in the last forty years and endometriosis incidence is increasing rapidly. However there remains an official silence in New Zealand around possible environmental causes of breast cancer and endometriosis, and MCS is still not recognised as a condition seriously affecting the health of a significant number of women. Overseas studies have shown that some 70-80 percent of people who suffer from MCS are women.
The forum called for immediate government action on the environmental causes of these diseases, and legislation that gives individuals the right to know the levels of endocrine disrupting chemicals they are exposed to and the impact they are having. Meanwhile it is essential to limit exposure as much as possible by eating organic food and avoiding all known sources of these chemicals.
More on this issue ....
The Big Fat Con Story
By Paul Campos, Guardian Unlimited, April 24, 2004
Size really doesn't matter. You can be just as healthy if you're fat as you can if you're slender. And don't let the obesity 'experts' persuade you otherwise, argues Paul Campos in The Guardian.
In January 2003, as America prepared to go to war with Iraq, the US surgeon general, Richard Carmona, warned the nation that it faced a far more dangerous threat than Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Rather than focusing on the danger posed by nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Carmona told his audience, "Let's look at a threat that is very real, and already here: obesity." More...
Smoking is worse than you thought
by Marc Kaufman, The Washington Post, May 29 2004
Cigarette smoking significantly harms almost every important organ of the body and has been directly linked to a new series of illnesses including leukaemia, cataracts, pneumonia and cancers of the kidney, cervix, pancreas and stomach.
Forty years after the US surgeon general's first report on smoking, which said that cigarettes caused lung cancer and chronic bronchitis, the present surgeon general, Richard Carmona, gave his assessment of the state of scientific knowledge about cigarette smoking. His conclusions were stark. More...
Death By Medicine
by Gary Null MD
A comprehensive scrutiny of peer-reviewed medical journals reveals that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year making the American medical system the leading cause of death and injury in the US. More...
NIH Scientists violate federal guidelines
By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer, June 23, 2004
An investigation of potential conflicts of interest finds that scientists have broken the rules for personal profit.A US congressional probe into the agency has found that researchers at the supposedly independent US National Institutesof Health have used research for personal gain and have been involved in unethical lucrative deals with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. More...
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