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tagged w/ Birth Control
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Studies Suggest Higher Risk Of Blood Clots With Some Birth Control Pills
A couple of papers just published by the British Medical Journal add to the evidence that the latest type of birth control pills may confer a higher risk of blood clots than older kinds of oral contraceptives.
The newer pills — including Yaz and Yasmin — contain a synthetic hormone called drospirenone. Many older contraceptives rely on levonorgestrel, another type of the progestin hormone.
As NPR's Richard Knox reported last year, Yaz quickly became the best-selling birth control pill in the U.S. after its introduction in 2006. More than
Here's a recap of the latest data.
In an analysis of a sample of U.S. insurance claims, the researchers found that women taking contraceptives with drospirenone had more than twice the risk of developing blood clots than those taking contraceptives that used levonorgestrel. The rates of blood clots (as calculated using the number per years of 100,000 women taking the medicines) was 30.8 for drospirenone and 12.5 for levonorgestrel.
A second study looked at cases of blood clots in British women who started taking an oral contraceptive containing either the new kind of progestin or the older one. The researchers found women taking the drosperinone contraceptives had a 2.7 times greater risk of developing a blood clot than those taking the older type. The rates for clots were 23 vs. 9.1 (again calculated using the clots per years of 100,000 women taking the medicines).
So what does it all mean? The increased risk suggested by these studies is about two to three times those from older pills, but the chances that any particular woman taking the newer medicines will get a blood clot is still pretty low.
Still, the studies aren't definitive, as editorial in BMJ notes. Women concerned about the issue could consider other, older options, if there's no medical reason to rule them out.
In a statement, Bayer, maker of Yaz and Yasmin, criticized the studies as flawed and affirmed the safety of its pills. "Given the already large and robust scientific body of evidence, in Bayer's opinion, these studies do not change the overall assessment about the safety of Bayer's oral contraceptives," the company said.
http://n.pr/i7Sng0A couple of papers just published by the British Medical Journal add to the evidence... more-
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98% of Catholic women use some form of birth control...
TYT discusses a study that shows the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. The majority of Catholic women are using methods to control reproduction and yet they are against these methods.TYT discusses a study that shows the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. The majority of... more-
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Indonesia's birth control pill for men
BANGKOK, Thailand — On the remote Indonesian island of Papua, tribesmen have long noticed the curious effect of a shrub called “gandarusa.”
If you chew its leaves often enough, men say, your wife won’t get pregnant.
Indonesian scientists, who have transferred this folk method from the jungle to the lab, claim they can extract the shrub’s active ingredient and mass produce it as an over-the-counter pill.
If they’re right, they will accomplish what Western pharmaceutical giants have researched but failed to deliver for decades: a birth control pill for men.
“With luck, it could be released late this year, but it will probably be sold in stores early next year,” said Sugiri Syarief, the head of Indonesia’s state-run National Family Planning Coordination Board.
Researchers began analyzing gandarusa in 1988, Sugiri said. Animal and human trials began in the 1990s and the plant’s effective compound was patented in 2007.
According to a government report on the drug, it prevents pregnancy by slowing down the activity of certain enzymes in the sperm that help them wriggle into a female’s ovum.
Researchers have tested the pill on two waves of male volunteers: first 36 men, then 120 men. This year, they’ll conduct a 350-man study to reinforce their findings so far: that trial volunteers’ sperm remains healthy but unable to penetrate a woman’s egg.
Men taking the gandarusa pills typically regain the ability to impregnate after 72 days, Sugiri said. “There are no side effects,” he said, though his study notes that some men experienced a boosted sex drive.
How did a far-less developed nation beat the Western world to this breakthrough? And for only $226,000, the amount Sugiri estimates his agency has spent on the project?
Bio-diversity deserves some credit. Indonesia is a lush and fertile archipelago, home to the world’s fourth-largest population and an estimated 7,000 medicinal plants. Potential benefits derived from this diverse range of flora are constantly undergoing study.
But the larger impasse to male birth control pills has been pharmaceutical giants, said Elaine Lissner, director of the non-profit Male Contraception Information Project in San Francisco.
Global demand for male birth control appears high, with a 2005 German survey revealing that 60 percent of men in Spain, Germany, Mexico and Brazil are willing to use a new male contraceptive.
But pouring millions into developing a birth control pill for guys still isn’t attractive as a business decision, Lissner said.
A recent study by the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that more than 80 percent of women who’ve ever had sex with a man used birth control pills at some point. A male birth control pill could eat into this massive market. And because other options already exist — condoms and vasectomies — the male birth control pill would need to sell for a relatively cheap price.
German pharmaceutical firm Schering dropped male birth control research projects five years ago. Many other drug companies have done the same. A report authored by Lissner notes that, for decades, pundits have promised a male hormonal birth control method will arrive “in five to 10 years.”
“It’s a nightmare from the ‘for-profit’ standpoint,” Lissner said. “We have to accept that the needs of for-profit entities and the needs of the public don’t always perfectly match.”
Research into the gandarusa pill, however, is backed by a different motive: population control.
Though Indonesia’s population of 237 million is only increasing by about 1.3 percent annually, according to the state’s family planning agency, the nation’s poor do most of the procreating. Roughly half of Indonesians live off $2 a day.
Stabilizing Indonesia’s population is now a major government priority, Sugiri said. His family planning agency’s budget was doubled last year to $271 million.
“Everybody has to understand that if we do nothing, the population explosion will be too much,” he said. “We can’t just give men two choices: vasectomy or condoms.”
But Indonesia isn’t the only Asian nation pouring research into male birth control. In China, researchers have tested a hormone-altering pill that proved 95 percent effective.
Indian scientists have developed a polymer that, when injected into vas deferens tubes, kills almost all the sperm before ejaculation. When the polymer is flushed out with a doctor’s assistance, the man is again able to father children.
“A lot of the most exciting work is coming out the developing world,” Lissner said. “When you have incredible brainpower that now has access to good equipment, you start getting some pretty good science.”
But U.S. regulations are likely to prevent American men from accessing these recent developments anytime soon.
Before authorizing a pill’s U.S. release, the federal Food and Drug Administration would likely want scientists to repeat many studies conducted abroad, though some of the data could “potentially be re-used in an application,” Lissner said. The entire process, she estimated, could take five to 10 years.
If Indonesia’s government fulfills its promise, and releases the world’s first cheap, safe, mass-produced birth control pill for men, it will likely require an endorsement from influential religious figures.
Birth control has been depicted as Western “poison” by fundamentalist Islamic groups in Indonesia. Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global movement to establish an Islamic caliphate, has held conferences to sway Muslim youth from using condoms and birth control pills.
According to the Jakarta Post, speakers at a 2009 gathering announced that birth control is “clearly an attempt at genocide that has been planned carefully by the West.”
It is unclear how Islamic hardliners would react to a homegrown pill. The Iranian government has successfully relied on the Quran to promote birth control by highlighting verses that encourage family planning.
Indonesia’s president and other key politicians are ready to publicly support the gandarusa pill, Sugiri said. “The results look really good,” he said. “If everything goes OK, then we’ll want to start promoting this to other countries.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/asia-pacific/indonesia/110224/indonesia-birth-control-pill-papua-men?page=fullBANGKOK, Thailand — On the remote Indonesian island of Papua, tribesmen have... more-
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Weekly Pulse: Vermont Poised to Pass Single-Payer
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Vermont is poised to abolish most forms of private health insurance, Lauren Else reports for In These Times. The state’s newly inaugurated Democratic governor, Peter Shumlin, unveiled his health insurance plan in early February. If the state legislature passes the bill, Vermont will become the first state to ban most forms of private health insurance.
The bill is getting support from some unlikely quarters:
On February 24, the Republican Mayor Christopher Louras, of Rutland, urged the state to adopt the single-payer legislation, noting that more than a third of the city’s $7 million annual payroll is consumed by healthcare costs. “The only way to fix the problem is to blow it up and start over,” Louras said.
A very bad doctor
In the Texas Observer, Saul Elbein tells the bizarre story of small-town huckster Dr. Rolando Arafiles and the nurses who exposed him as a quack and paid with their jobs.
Arafiles came to work at Winkler County Memorial Hospital in 2008. Nurses Anne Mitchell and Vickilyn Galle noticed that patients were walking out of his office with mysterious liquids. Arafiles was selling untested dietary supplements.
Sometimes, he even took patients off their real medicine and directed them to buy his cure-alls, which he sold online, and promoted in seminars at the local Pizza Hut. He prescribed powerful thyroid-stimulating drugs to patients with normal thyroid levels, a potentially lethal practice. He was also performing “unconventional” surgeries, even though he wasn’t a surgeon.
The hospital ignored the nurses’ complaints, so they reported Arafiles to the Texas Medical Board. After the board informed Arafiles that he was under investigation, Arafiles got his golf buddy, the local sheriff, to issue a warrant to search the nurses’ computers. The hospital fired the nurses. The local prosecutor indicted them for “misuse of official information” but these charges fizzled out. In 2010, the two women were awarded $750,000 in compensation from the county, but they still haven’t found new nursing jobs.
What are they doing out there?
Lon Newman is the executive director of Family Planning Health Services, a Wisconsin health clinic that offers birth control and other reproductive health care, but doesn’t provide abortions, or even abortion referrals. Anti-choice protesters picket the clinic anyway, Newman reports at RH Reality Check. They carry signs with misleading slogans like “The Pill Kills” and “Stop Chemical Abortion.”
Newman wonders why, given all the pressing problems in Wisconsin, the nation, and the world, some people make it a priority to hang out at Family Planning Health Services and badmouth birth control:
There are so many struggles for freedom, social justice, and disaster relief right now, that I do not think it is justifiable to be blocking access to health care for our uninsured neighbors who want to delay childbearing so they can finish school or take a new job or even wait to have children until they can afford them.
South Dakota institutes 72-hour abortion waiting period
The governor of South Dakota signed legislation this week that will force women seeking abortions in the state to observe a 72-hour waiting period. As Scott Lemieux argues in TAPPED, mandatory waiting period legislation is based on inherently sexist assumptions. By instituting a waiting period, the state is institutionalizing the stereotype that women seeking abortions are acting irrationally and must be coerced into waiting.
Body positive
Body hatred hasn’t been this popular since the days of the hair shirt. Hundreds of millions of women, and no shortage of men, spend billions of hours and billions of dollars despising their bodies. A new movement is afoot to find the political in this very personal issue, Sarah Seltzer reports in AlterNet. This year, the Women’s Therapy Center Institute will hold a series of summits in New York, London, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Melbourne. In keeping with the theme of “Loved Bodies, Big Ideas” participants are discussing a range of ideas for helping to improve body image, including a so-called “reality stamp,” a seal of approval that would indicate that a photograph hasn’t been digitally altered beyond the bounds of reason. Come to think of it, a “reality stamp” could be useful for all kinds of politics.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger Vermont is poised to abolish most... more-
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Weekly Pulse: Japan’s Nuclear Crisis Deepens
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
A second reactor unit at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan may have ruptured, authorities announced on Wednesday. This is on top of their earlier revelation that the containment vessel of a separate reactor unit had cracked.
As of Tuesday, four nuclear reactors in Japan seem to be in partial meltdown in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami, according to Christian Parenti of the Nation:
One of them, reactor No. 2, seems to have ruptured. The situation is spinning out of control as radiation levels spike. The US Navy has pulled back its aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, after seventeen of its crew were exposed to radiation while flying sixty miles off the Japanese coast.
But despite three major explosions—at reactor No. 1, then No. 3, then No. 2—the Fukushima containment vessels seem to be holding. (Chernobyl lacked that precaution, having only a flimsy cement containment shell that collapsed, allowing the massive release of radioactive material.)
So, the good news is that only one out of four of the reactors is teetering on the brink of a full meltdown, and engineers might still be able to stave off disaster. The bad news, Parenti explains, is that spent fuel rods on the reactor sites could pose grave health hazards even if the threat of meltdown is averted. Even so-called “spent” rods remain highly radioactive.
The big question is whether the facilities that house this waste survived the earthquake, the tsunami, and any subsequent massive explosions at the nearby reactor. Given the magnitude of the destruction, and the relatively flimsy facilities used to house the spent rods, it seems unlikely that all the containment pools emerged unscathed. Parenti explains:
Unlike the reactors, spent fuel pools are not—repeat not—housed in any sort of hardened or sealed containment structures. Rather, the fuel rods are packed tightly together in pools of water that are often several stories above ground.
A pond at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is overheating, but radiation levels were so high that the Japanese military has postponed a helicopter mission to douse the pond with water.
Journalist and environmental activist Harvey Wasserman tells the Real News Network that the housing the spent rods (a.k.a. nuclear waste) is a chronic problem for the global nuclear industry.
Wasserman told GRITtv that the west coast of the United States has reactors that could suffer a similar fate in the event of a sufficiently large earthquake.
“If I were in Japan, I would at least get the children away from the reactor, because their bodies are growing faster and their cells are more susceptible to radiation damage. I would go out to 50 kilometers and at least get the children away from those reactors,” nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen told DemocracyNow! on Tuesday. At the time he said this, 70,000 residents had already been forced to evacuate their homes, and another 140,000 were ordered to stay indoors.
Mainstreaming anti-contraception
Kirsten Powers, Fox News’ resident self-proclaimed liberal, took to the pages of the Daily Beast recently to make the bizarre case that Planned Parenthood should be de-funded because the 100-year-old organization doesn’t really prevent the half-million abortions that it claims to prevent by supplying millions of clients with reliable birth control. (Powers was forced to concede that a gross statistical error rendered her entire piece invalid.) At RH Reality Check, Amanda Marcotte describes how Powers attempted to repackage fringe anti-contraception arguments for a mainstream audience. At TAPPED, I explain why Planned Parenthood’s abortion-prevention claim is rock solid.
Diet quackery
Unscrupulous doctors are cashing in on the latest diet fad: hormone injections derived from the urine of pregnant women, Kristina Chew notes for Care2.com. Patients pay $1,000 for consultations, a supply human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), and a 500-calorie-a-day diet plan. There is no evidence that hCG increases weight loss more than a starvation diet alone. But paying $1,000 to inject yourself in the butt every day does evidently work up a hell of a placebo effect.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger A second reactor unit at the... more-
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Ke$ha, The New Face Of Lifestyles Condoms
Ke$ha is a fan of SAFE SEX! The “Tik Tok” singer just struck a deal with LifeStyles Condoms to have 10,000 customized condoms to throw into crowds at her upcoming live shows.
MORE http://bumpshack.com/2011/03/05/kesha-the-new-face-of-lifestyles-condoms/Ke$ha is a fan of SAFE SEX! The “Tik Tok” singer just struck a deal with... more-
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Weekly Pulse: The Republicans’ War On Women
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The entire federal government might shut down over birth control. Yes, birth control. This special edition of the Pulse is about the ongoing war against women being waged in Congress and in state legislatures nationwide.
Cutting birth control
Last Friday, the House voted to amend the continuing resolution to fund the federal government to defund the $317 million Title X Family Planning Program, a major beneficiary of which is Planned Parenthood. None of this money funds abortions. Instead, it goes to birth control, cancer screenings, and other reproductive health services for 5 million low-income Americans.
This kind of preventive care is highly cost-effective. Every federal family planning dollar saves an estimated $4 tax dollars on unintended pregnancy costs alone. Saving money by de-funding contraception is like “saving money” by not paying your rent. It’s not savings if you end up staying in a hotel that costs even more.
As Nick Baumann reports for Mother Jones, Senate Democrats are confident that they can defeat the measure. However, if that happens and the House Republicans won’t pass an acceptable alternative, the federal government will run out of money and shut down until the impasse is resolved.
Julianne Hing, blogging at TAPPED, wrote of last Friday’s House vote to de-fund Planned Parenthood:
I find it difficult to summon the energy to be angered or even shocked by the news anymore. I wouldn’t describe my reaction on Friday as either of those two. It felt like something much deeper — like an attack on women and women’s access to health care. I took it personally.
The vote was just the latest assault on women’s health care by House Republicans. H.R. 3 initially proposed to redefine rape as “forcible rape.” That provision was withdrawn amid public outcry, but the bill would still effectively eliminate private health insurance coverage for abortion. H.R. 358 would give hospitals a loophole to not refer women for abortion, even if their lives are in danger.
The miscarriage mafia
Georgia state Rep. Bobbie Franklin (R) has introduced a bill that would investigate unsupervised miscarriages as potential murders, Robin Marty reports for Care2.
Here’s the relevant text of the bill, H.B.1:
When a spontaneous fetal death required to be reported by this Code section occurs without medical attendance at or immediately after the delivery or when inquiry is required by Article 2 of Chapter 16 of Title 45, the ‘Georgia Death Investigation Act,’ the proper investigating official shall investigate the cause of fetal death and shall prepare and file the report within 30 days[.]
The bill opens with the familiar anti-choice tactic of defining a fetus as a person and declaring abortion to be murder. Even fervent anti-choicers may regard this as something of an overreach on Franklin’s part. Historically, anti-choicers have sought to pass discrete “personhood amendments” while maintaining the polite fiction that these laws have nothing to do with restricting abortion. Franklin is not a fan of the incremental approach. He is seeking to redefine a fetus as a person and abortion as murder in a single piece of legislation.
As Marty notes, one third of all pregnancies end in miscarriages. In early miscarriages, the woman may never even know she was pregnant. So, Franklin essentially wants to criminalize unauthorized vaginal bleeding in Georgia. Setting aside the basic human rights of women, as Franklin is only too happy to do, his miscarriage bill is about as practical as his bid to make Georgians pay their state taxes in gold and silver coins.
State legislatures all over the country are weighing ever more draconian restrictions on abortion. Republican lawmakers in Ohio have proposed legislation to ban abortion of any fetus with a heartbeat, Daniel Tencer of Raw Story reports. South Dakota Republicans were forced to back off a proposed law that appeared to legalize the murder of abortion providers.
Scott Walker’s anti-abortion crusade
You probably know Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as the Tea Party favorite who wants to take collective bargaining rights away from the state’s public employees. You may not know that Walker is also a longtime anti-abortion crusader. Andy Kroll of Mother Jones reports that Walker, a former president of his college’s chapter of Students for Life, has a long history of campaigning against abortion, contraception, and sex ed. As a gubernatorial candidate, Walker won the endorsement of the hardline Pro-Life Wisconsin, which even opposes abortion to save the life of the woman.
As I reported in RH Reality Check, Walker’s anti-union “budget repair” bill also contains an all-out attack on a popular and successful Medicaid program to provide birth control to Wisconsinites whose incomes would qualify them for Medicaid if they became pregnant. The program saves Wisconsin an estimated $45 million a year in maternal and infant health costs alone and brings in 9 federal dollars for every on dollar spent by the state.
The Republicans swept to power with promises of limited government and fiscal conservatism. Now that they’re in office, their true agenda appears to be restricting women’s freedom at taxpayers’ expense.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger The entire federal government might... more-
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New Health Care Law May Bring Free Birth Control
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130953478
Fifty years after the pill, another birth control revolution may be on the horizon: free contraception for women in the U.S., thanks to the new health care law.
That could start a shift toward more reliable — and expensive — forms of birth control that are gaining acceptance in other developed countries.
But first, look for a fight over social mores.
A panel of experts advising the government meets in November to begin considering what kind of preventive care for women should be covered at no cost to the patient, as required under President Barack Obama's overhaul.
But is birth control preventive medicine?
Conflicting answers frame what could be the next clash over moral values and a health law that passed only after a difficult compromise restricting the use of public money for abortions.
For many medical and public health experts, there's no debate.
But U.S. Catholic bishops say pregnancy is a healthy condition, not an illness. In comments filed with the Department of Health and Human Services, the bishops say they oppose any requirement to cover contraceptives or sterilization as preventive care.
So far, most other religious conservatives have stayed out of the debate, though that could change. Some say they are concerned about any requirement that might include the morning-after pill. The Food and Drug Administration classifies it as birth control; some religious conservatives see it as an abortion drug.
As recently as the 1990s, many health insurance plans didn't even cover birth control. Protests, court cases, and new state laws led to dramatic changes. Today, almost all plans now cover prescription contraceptives. So does Medicaid, the health care program for low-income people.
The use of birth control is "virtually universal" in the U.S., according to a government report this summer from the National Center for Health Statistics. Nearly 93 million prescriptions for contraceptives were dispensed in 2009, according to IMS Health, a market analysis firm. Generic versions of the pill are available at Walmart stores, for example, for $9 a month.
Still, about half of all pregnancies are unplanned, and many occur among women using some form of contraception. The government says the problem is rarely the birth control method, but "inconsistent or incorrect use," such as forgetting to take a pill.
Advocates say free birth control would begin to address the problem.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130953478 Fifty years after the... more-
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New and old birth control – a twisted history
This week a US study showed that a new contraceptive gel is set to revolutionise the birth control market. No longer will women across the world have to swallow pills, wear patches or get injections to stop those little tadpoles from impregnating them – all that is needed is a tiny 3mg dollop of the clear gel rubbed into the abdomen, thighs, arms or shoulders and is quickly absorbed, with no residue.
The recent tests was carried out at the not-for-profit Population Council research centre in New York, and involved 18 women in their 20s to 30s. Over seven months, none fell pregnant and the gel had "very high acceptability”. Not only is the gel efficient, but so far the tests have shown that women have suffered none of the usual annoying side effects of the pill such as nausea and weight gain. It’s also suitable for those who are breastfeeding, because unlike the Pill it doesn’t produce hormone levels that usually interfere with milk supply.
Preventing unwanted pregnancies is something that humans have been trying to do since the beginning of time. Here are some of the best and the worst attempts.
Scary history of birth control
1559 BC
Crocodile poo. Yes, that’s right, according to Ancient Egyptians writings some women believed that stuffing some crocodile dung into their vaginas would block the sperms. Medical ancient medical manuscript such as the Ebers Papyrus, described a method that might actually have worked; women were advised to grind dates, acacia tree bark, and honey together into a paste and apply it with seed wool to the vulva. Modern science has shown that, since acacia ferments into lactic acid, a well-known spermicide!
200 BC
The Greek gynaecologist Soranus (yes that was his name) knew that women were fertile during ovulation and promoted the rhythm method i.e. basing your sexual habits around the woman’s ovulation cycle, unfortunately Soranus incorrectly assumed that ovulation occurred during menstruation, rather than prior to it, oops. It wasn’t until the 1930s researchers were able to determine which days were safe to have sex using this method.
100 BC
Prostitutes in 1st-century BC are said to have ground their pelvises in a manner that increased their partner's pleasure, with the assumption that the movement simultaneously diverted the sperm away from the womb.
As well as dislodging the sperm by jumping backwards seven times after intercourse; and sitting down on bent knees in order to provoke sneezing!
100-500 AD
Women along the Mediterranean inserted sea sponges rinsed in acidic lemon juice or vinegar before intercourse, others used the scooped out lemon as a type of suppository.
1200-1400 AD
During the European dark ages it was dark indeed as superstition replaced science. European women sported amulets fashioned from a weasel's testicles, mule earwax, or a bone taken from the right side of a black cat. If the latter charm failed to work its magic it was simply “because the cat wasn't black enough."
1500 AD
Chastity belts, these devices—more shackles than belt —first appeared in Europe in the 15th century. They were designed to keep women sexually pure by making it physically impossible for them to have sex and conceive. The belts, which featured small openings to allow for urination and defecation, were often made in only one size, so larger women were forced to endure the pain of a tight fit. Chastity belts were also used to prevent masturbation.
1600-1800 AD
The mythical Dr Condom (Cundum or even Quondam) is believed to have been an English physician to whom the contraceptive of the same name is attributed, is said to have invented the sheath after Charles II became annoyed with the number of illegitimate children he had. By the 1800s most condoms were made from animal skin or intestines to prevent a syphilis infection. Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (1725-1798) was among the first to use condoms to prevent pregnancy. The famous womanizer called the condom an "English riding coat."
1840-1920 AD
In 1844, the American inventor Charles Goodyear (1800-1860) patented the vulcanization of rubber, which led to the mass production of condoms, as we now know them.
1925 AD
The first commercially produced diaphragm is made by Holland-Rantos in the USA, unlike the condom the woman can use it without the cooperation of her partner giving women for the first time, the control over her own contraceptive protection.
1960-now
The Pill arrived. Developed by Americans, but initially tested on Puerto Rican and Haitian women in the 1950s, the first version of the pill contained the hormones oestrogen and progestin, which were synthetically produced to mimic the body's natural hormones.
Take-up of the pill was fast and to this day more than 100 million women worldwide are believed to take the pill. This week a US study showed that a new contraceptive gel is set to revolutionise the... more-
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Did drugmaker hide birth control patch risks?
Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson may have known years ago about the deadly risks of its birth control patch Ortho Evra, according to internal documents obtained by NBC News.
Patient reports between 2002 and 2004 show that Ortho Evra was 12 times more likely to cause strokes and 18 times more likely to cause blood clots than the conventional birth control pill, NBC News' TODAY show revealed Wednesday.
When Ortho Evra first hit the market in 2002, it was a big hit. "Time" magazine called it one of the best inventions of the year and doctors have written nearly 40 million prescriptions for it. But as sales surged, so did claims of injury and even death.
Some experts say the patch is problematic because it delivers a continuous and high level of estrogen — 60 percent more estrogen than the pill. When a birth control pill is swallowed, it quickly dissolves into the system. But with the patch, estrogen keeps flowing into the bloodstream for an entire week.
"With the patch… there's no relief of the body of the woman from getting estrogen," Dr. Sidney Wolfe, Medical Director of watchdog group Public Citizen, told NBC.
Warnings ignored
Concern over the patch has led to high-level resignations at Johnson & Johnson.
In 2005, Johnson & Johnson Vice President Dr. Patrick Caubel suddenly quit, saying in his resignation letter, "I have been involved in the safety evaluation of Ortho Evra since its introduction on the market. … The estrogenic exposure [of the patch] was unusually high, as was the rate of fatalities."Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson may have known years ago about the deadly... more-
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Weekly Pulse: The Religious Right vs. Birth Control
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Does health care reform’s promise of preventive care extend to free birth control? Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services have 18 months to decide whether to require insurers to provide oral contraceptives, IUDs, and other prescription birth control with no co-pay. With pro-choice Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the helm, HHS is expected to say yes. [Update: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that birth control will not be on the White House's preliminary list of free preventive services, to be issued today. However, as Miriam Perez of feministing explains, HHS will ultimately have the final word. Observers, including Dana Goldstein who covers reproductive rights for the Daily Beast, are optimistic that the pro-choice side will carry the day at HHS.]
At this point in the process, social conservatives are shut out in the cold, quaking with impotent rage. Now that the reform bill is law, HHS has to interpret the rules—and the Obama administration officials at HHS can’t be swayed as easily as elected officials.
Religious right on the warpath
Predictably, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the National Abstinence Education Association, and the Heritage Foundation are up in arms. They’ve picked a deeply unpopular battle. Abortion remains controversial in some circles, but birth control is as American as baseball. The vast majority of sexually active women in the U.S. tell pollsters that they are not trying to become pregnant, and 89% of them are using some form of birth control.
“Seriously,” writes Monica Potts of TAPPED, “a battle over contraceptives?” Over 15 million Americans currently use hormonal contraception. Studies show that the vast majority of Americans are morally comfortable with birth control.
Expanding access to birth control is smart policy because it reduces health care costs, as Suzi Khimm notes in Mother Jones. Birth control is a lot cheaper for insurers than pregnancy and childbirth. Free birth control could change women’s lives for the better. In this economy, $30-$50 a month for hormonal birth control can be a major obstacle for many. As Michelle Chen notes in ColorLines, women of color are among those hardest hit by out-of-pocket costs.
Birth control as common ground?
Many centrists hope that contraception will be a source of “common ground” between the pro-choice and anti-abortion camps. The premise sounds reasonable. If anti-choicers oppose abortion, surely they will support measures proven to reduce the abortion rate, like expanded access to contraception. Political scientist Scott Lemieux argues in TAPPED that conservative opposition to birth control coverage is further proof that the common ground hypothesis is wishful thinking:
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores the broader set of assumptions about women and sexuality on which actual opposition to abortion is based. Consider anti-choice Republicans, who consistently opposed expanding contraceptive use: Given the choice between reducing abortion rates and controlling female sexuality, they will always choose the latter. Thus the idea that contraception can be a means of achieving a ceasefire in the culture wars has always been a fantasy. Liberals and conservatives aren’t just divided by abortion but by broader questions of female equality and sexual freedom.
The USCCB clearly understands that birth control is broadly popular. Its lobbyists aren’t even trying to argue that birth control shouldn’t be covered because it’s sinful. Instead, they are playing semantic games about what constitutes preventative health care. According to the USCCB, birth control shouldn’t count because fertility isn’t a disease. Be that as it may, pregnancy is a life-altering health condition that can kill you. As a matter of fact, the Catholic Church is on the record as saying that pregnant women must sacrifice their own lives for their fetuses. Ergo, pregnancy prevention is preventive health care.
Approving free birth control would go a long way towards restoring the trust between the Obama administration and its pro-choice base, at low political cost. It seems unlikely that the USCCB and its allies have the power to fuel a national backlash on this one. After all, three quarters of U.S. Catholics disagree with their own church’s teachings on birth control.
Conscience concerns
Speaking of the Department of Health and Human Services, Megan Carpentier at RH Reality Check wonders what happened to President Barack Obama’s early promise to repeal the so-called “conscience clause” rule that allows health care workers to opt out of providing reproductive health care that conflicts with their anti-choice principles. The rule is still on the books, over a year after Obama pledged to repeal it.
FEMA Foul
Finally, how did some BP oil spill cleanup workers end up living in formaldehyde-laced FEMA trailers ruled unfit for human habitation? As I report for Working In These Times, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wants answers from FEMA and the General Services Administration about how these trailers found their way back onto the market.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger Does health care reform’s... more-
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Weekly Pulse: Kagan Hearings: Gags, God, Guns, and Gays
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings kicked off on Monday. Her nomination has been met by glum resignation on the left and indifference on the right, as Adam Serwer notes in the American Prospect. Kagan is hoping to replace the Supreme Court’s most prominent liberal, Justice John Paul Stevens, who stepped down earlier this week. Progressives are counting on Kagan to shore up the pro-choice faction on the court.
Kagan has never been a judge and she hasn’t published very many academic law opinions. As a result, the confirmation process is leaning heavily on her counsels to President Bill Clinton as a White House adviser, her clerkship with legendary liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and her stint as Dean of Harvard Law School.
Kagan on choice
RH Reality Check has video of a key exchange in Kagan’s confirmation hearing yesterday, in which Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) pressed Kagan on her views about life and health exemptions for the mother within abortion bans.
“Do you believe the constitution requires that the health of the mother be protected in any statute restricting access to abortion?” Feinstein asked Kagan.
“Senator Feinstein, I do think that the continuing holding of Roe and Doe v. Bolton is that women’s life and women’s health have to be protected in abortion regulation,” Kagan replied.
That’s a good start, but it’s hardly the ringing endorsement of choice that progressives would have hoped. Kagan went on to talk the special case of “partial birth abortion bans,” which she encouraged Bill Clinton to support while he was president. “Partial birth abortion” isn’t even a medical term. It’s a marketing term coined by anti-choicers in their bid to chip away at Roe v. Wade. For pro-choicers, it’s disappointing to see Kagan uncritically buying into that frame.
Title X and the Gag Order
Jodi Jacobson discusses Kagan’s record on choice issues in greater detail at RH Reality Check. She notes that the Center for Reproductive Rights reviewed Kagan’s record and raised many questions about her views on abortion. On the bright side, CRR believes that Kagan would have struck down the Title X gag rule. Title X was established in 1970 to provide public funding for reproductive health care, including birth control.
In 1988, the Secretary of Health and Human Services imposed a so-called “gag rule” that prevented doctors from talking about abortion and required them to refer patients to services for the welfare of “the unborn.” Kagan argued in a 1992 law review article that the gag order violated the First Amendment because the government was trying to silence one point of view while promoting another.
However, in a memo for Justice Thurgood Marshall, Kagan said it was “ludicrous” that a lower court found that the Eighth Amendment guarantees elective abortions for women in prison. Kagan disagreed with the lower court’s finding that elective abortions are “serious medical needs.”
Obamacare all over again
A Supreme Court confirmation hearing is like Shark Week on the Learning Channel. Chum’s up!
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) criticized Kagan for rejecting the fringe legal theory of “tentherism,” a position that opponents of health care reform have used to argue that Obamacare is unconstitutional. As Ian Millhiser observes in AlterNet, it’s ironic that Sessions also criticized Kagan as an incipient “activist judge.” Embracing “tentherism” would be nothing if not judicial activism. It’s extremely unlikely that any tenther-based challenge would make it to the Supreme Court.
Outside the Senate chamber, anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera is demanding to know whether Dean Kagan schemed to allow transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice, reports Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones.
Some Republican senators questioned Kagan about her decision to bar military recruiters from school-sponsored recruiting events at Yale Law School over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. On the outside, a Yale grad and Republican activist named Flagg Youngblood has taken to the talkshow circuit to complain about how he had to attend ROTC drills at another school. It’s not clear why any of this is Kagan’s problem, seeing as she was Dean of Harvard and took a much weaker stance on military recruiting.
That’s not cooling Youngblood’s apocalyptic anti-Kagan rhetoric, though, Adam Weinstein reports in Mother Jones. “In the last 18 months, the president and his plotting comrades have dragged the United States to the edge of Constitutional oblivion. America’s in the eleventh hour, and Elena Obama must be stopped from pushing us over the cliff,” Youngblood recently proclaimed.
Part of the plan
Meanwhile in Nevada, Republican Senate hopeful Sharron Angle is in hot water for asserting that women who get pregnant through rape must be forced to give birth because these pregnancies are all part of God’s plan. Good catch by Vanessa Valenti of Feministing.
“You know, I’m a Christian, and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things,” Angle said in an interview with a conservative broadcaster in January.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court... more-
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The History of Birth Control: 10 Fascinating Facts
Since time began, men and women have struggled with the desire to have sex on an unlimited basis, and the desire to have some measure of control over how many children they had.These ten fascinating facts about the history of birth control show us that it certainly hasn’t always been that easy.
Link: http://www.mastersinpublichealth.net/the-history-of-birth-control-10-fascinating-facts/Since time began, men and women have struggled with the desire to have sex on an... more -
1 in 4 teens would be pleased to take part in a pregnancy
The CDC just released the results of a periodic survey that measures teen attitudes toward sex. The most shocking change was in the rising number of teens who have a positive attitude about teen pregnancy and the number who reported using the rhythm birth control method.
http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/2010/06/03/1-in-4-teens-would-be-pleased-to-take-part-in-a-pregnancy/The CDC just released the results of a periodic survey that measures teen attitudes... more-
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The Dark Side of Birth Control: 17 Adverse Health Effects
2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, one of the most popular methods of birth control in the United States and an increasingly popular birth control method in the public health realm. While oral contraceptives have helped many women, they also contribute to many concerns.
link :
http://mphdegree.org/2010/the-dark-side-of-birth-control-17-adverse-health-effects/2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, one of the most popular... more-
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America's favorite birth control method turns 50!
CHICAGO – A world without "the pill" is unimaginable to many young women who now use it to treat acne, skip periods, improve mood and, of course, prevent pregnancy. They might be surprised to learn that U.S. officials announcing approval of the world's first oral contraceptive were uncomfortable.
"Our own ideas of morality had nothing to do with the case," said John Harvey of the Food and Drug Administration in 1960.
The pill was safe, in other words. Don't blame us if you think it's wicked.
Sunday, Mother's Day, is the 50th anniversary of that provocative announcement that introduced to the world what is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important inventions of the last century.
The world has changed, but it's debatable what part the birth control pill played. Some experts think it gets too much credit or blame for the sexual revolution. After all, sex outside of marriage wasn't new in 1960.
The pill definitely changed sex though, giving women more control over their fertility than they'd ever had before and permanently putting doctors — who previously didn't see contraceptives as part of their job — in the birth control picture.
But some things haven't changed. Now as then, a male birth control pill is still on the drawing board.
"There's a joke in this field that a male pill is always five to seven years away from the market, and that's what people have been saying since 1960," said Andrea Tone, a history professor at Montreal's McGill University and author of "Devices and Desires: A History of Contraception in America."
The pill is America's favorite form of reversible birth control. (Sterilization is the leader overall.) Nearly a third of women who want to prevent unwanted pregnancies use it. "In 2008, Americans spent more than $3.5 billion on birth control pills," Tone said, "and we've gone from the one pill to 40 different brands."
There are Yaz, Yasmin, Seasonale, Seasonique and Lybrel — all with slightly different packaging, formulations and selling points. Lybrel is the first pill designed to eliminate menstrual periods entirely, although gynecologists say any generic can do the same thing if you skip the placebo and take the active pill every day.
In the 1960s, anthropologist Ashley Montagu thought the birth control pill was as important as the discovery of fire. Turns out it wasn't the answer to overpopulation, war and poverty, as some of its early advocates had hoped. Nor did it universally save marriages.
"Married couples could have happier sex with more freedom and less fear. The divorce rate might go down and there would be no more unwanted pregnancies," said Elaine Tyler May, 62, a University of Minnesota history professor who wrote "America and the Pill.
"None of those things happened, not the optimistic hopes or the pessimistic fears of sexual anarchy," she said.
And it didn't eliminate all unwanted pregnancies either. Nearly half of all pregnancies to U.S. women are unintended and nearly half of those end in abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which has gathered data on abortions for years.
The pill is often associated with the women's movement of the 1970s. But the two feminists behind the pill, the ones who provided the intellectual spark and the financial backing, were born a century earlier, in the 1870s.
As suffragists worked for the vote, renowned birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger distributed pamphlets with contraceptive advice and dreamed of a magic pill to prevent pregnancy.
Her grandson, Alex Sanger, 62, now chair of the International Planned Parenthood Council, remembers playing catch as a boy with his famous grandmother and eating her firehouse-spicy food.
"My grandmother had the idea for the pill back in 1912 when she was working on the lower East Side of New York," Alex Sanger said. "She saw women resorting to back alley, illegal abortions. One too many of these women died in her arms and she said 'Enough.'
Katharine McCormick, a philanthropist with a science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bankrolled the work of Gregory Pincus, the man Sanger convinced to develop the pill. "It was my grandmother's idea and Katharine McCormick's money," Alex Sanger said.
Ironically, when health hazards of the early pill arose — high levels of hormones caused blood clots in some women — young feminists protested that men had invented it and turned women into unwitting guinea pigs.
The FDA's response to the hazards of the pill led to greater access to safety information for patients, another less-appreciated part of the pill's legacy.
Today's pill, with much lower doses of hormones, is much safer than the pill of 50 years ago. And it may even be good for you.
"The health benefits are tremendous," said Dr. Melissa Gilliam, chief of family planning contraceptive research at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "It decreases the risk of ovarian cancer and uterine cancer. If we called it 'the cancer-preventing pill,' it would have far better traction. It's a real success story."
The pill divided mothers and daughters in its early days. Married women had clamored for it as soon as it went on the market — within two years of its approval, more than a million women were taking it. But that didn't mean they wanted their unmarried daughters to have it.
"I talk to my daughter about the pill a lot more than I talked to my mother about the pill," said Jean Elson, 61, a sociologist and expert on women's health at the University of New Hampshire. Elson secretly started taking the pill in college in the late 1960s before she was married. Her mother wouldn't have approved.
"The only conversations about sex I remember with my mother were 'not to.' I remember warnings about tongue kissing. She didn't do that until she was engaged," Elson said.
Many parents now discuss birth control with their unmarried daughters and sons. They also may discuss condoms to prevent disease, including AIDS. The greatest fear associated with unprotected sex for young people is no longer pregnancy, it's serious sexually transmitted disease.
Another change is advertising. Women now in their 20s have seen ads for the pill nearly their entire lives. The first magazine ads for the pill ran in 1992. Now TV ads show smiling women liberated by the ability to limit or even eliminate their menstrual periods.
"The message is your period shouldn't get in the way. It's an appealing message," said Sarah Forbes, 28, curator of the Museum of Sex in New York. Her generation takes the pill for many reasons and they take it for granted.
"We're so used to it being so freely available," Forbes said. "It's almost impossible to think of a world where we didn't have access to it."
The pill is so ubiquitous that young women may have trouble learning about other options. Tone said one doctor said he didn't remember how to fit a diaphragm, a flexible shield that covers the cervix. The pill is so highly marketed that other methods, like implants and IUDs, aren't clearly understood by young women.CHICAGO – A world without "the pill" is unimaginable to many young... more-
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Baltimore Archdiocese Sues the City over New Pregnancy Center Law
The city of Baltimore enacted a new law which forces pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to put up signs saying they don't offer birth control or abortion services. Does the law threaten the freedom of speech of non-profits, or does it ensure that young, vulnerable women get truthful information about their pregnancies? The Archdiocese would claim the former, and is suing the city to make their point.
We traveled to Baltimore to speak with the City Council, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Pregnancy Concerns for our investigative video report.The city of Baltimore enacted a new law which forces pro-life crisis pregnancy centers... more-
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Weekly Pulse: The Pill at 50 and Oklahoma's Extreme Ultrasound Law
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Fifty years ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first birth control pill. Needless to say, the repercussions of this medical and public policy breakthrough are still being felt today.
Catherine Epstein of the Women’s Media Center thinks it’s significant that we celebrate the date a U.S. government agency approved the Pill, as opposed to the anniversary of its invention. The Pill has been at the center of a power struggle from the very beginning:
The pill has been under ideological fire since the first tiny tablet hit a woman’s palm. And the impact it’s had on women’s autonomy and freedom has been – as decades have passed – nearly equal to the fear (and subsequent restriction) it’s instilled in those who believe in curtailing reproductive rights.
Which came first?
Michelle Goldberg of the American Prospect takes up a longstanding debate: Did the Pill liberate women, or did it take a feminist revolution to make the Pill relevant? Call it a chicken and ovum problem: American women were able to use the Pill to wrest control of their reproductive destinies because they had a certain level of autonomy to begin with.
Women didn’t immediately embrace the pill when it came on the market because the stigma of divorcing sex and reproduction was still too great. Arguably, society’s attitudes about sex and reproduction had to evolve before the Pill could catch on. As Goldberg notes, oral contraceptives are widely available in Saudi Arabia, yet they pose no apparent threat to the patriarchy. I would argue that reproductive freedom is a positive feedback loop. Women who control their fertility are in a better position to push for even more autonomy through education, paid work, and social activism.
Reproductive rights and the Supreme Court
The battle over reproductive rights is far from over. With the impending retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, all eyes are on President Barack Obama as he mulls the shortlist to replace the Court’s leading liberal. Interestingly, the reputed front-runners are all white women: Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Judge Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Merrick Garland of the D.C. Circuit, and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm.
Paul Waldman of the American Prospect casts a jaded eye on the upcoming confirmation battle. He predicts a good, old fashioned culture war brawl. He notes that the Republicans are already preparing to paint Wood as an “abortion rights extremist,” if she gets the nod, according to early opposition research obtained New York Times.
Everything is not OK
Speaking of abortion rights, Rachel Larris of RH Reality Check reports that the Center for Reproductive Rights has filed a lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s new law, which forces women to undergo ultrasounds prior to obtaining abortions. The Center argues that the law is unconstitutional because it violates a woman’s right to privacy by forcing unwanted information on her and impinging upon doctor/patient confidentiality.
Monica Potts of TAPPED floats the idea that, because these mandatory ultrasounds typically involve a vaginal probe, the Oklahoma law might violate the state’s rape laws.
WellPoint caves to House Dems
Finally, some good news on the women’s health front. Evan McMorris-Santoro of Talking Points Memo reports that health insurance giant WellPoint caved to political pressure from House Democrats and agreed to stop dropping sick customers.
WellPoint achieved nationwide notoriety in recent weeks when it was revealed that automatically reviewed the records of women diagnosed with breast cancer (and other ailments) to see if they had any unreported preexisting conditions that might justify terminating their coverage. This practice will become illegal when the health care reform legislation takes effect, but WellPoint has agreed to stop ahead of schedule.
Action Urged on Neglected Diseases
In the Progressive, Dr. Unni Karunakara and Dr. Bernard Pecoul urge the Obama administration tackle more neglected tropical diseases. Obama has already pledged unprecedented aid to fight five neglected ailments afflicting the developing world. Krunakara and Pecoul argue that this isn’t enough. The administration is fighting the good fight on malaria, but sleeping sickness, visceral leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and Buruli ulcer, which affect a billion of the world’s poorest people.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger Fifty years ago, the Food and Drug... more-
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What One Person's "Favorite" Thing in the World Is
Worth the quick-read time...-
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Bristol Palin PSA for Birth Control
Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol is starring in a new PSA warning against the trials and tribulations of teen pregnancy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtcm9R-J3BkSarah Palin's daughter Bristol is starring in a new PSA warning against the... more-
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