Ian Frazer1,*
1Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research
The University of Queensland
4th Floor Research Extension
Building 1
Princess Alexandra Hospital
Ipswich Road
Woolloongabba Q’land 4102
Australia

Summary
An Australian newspaper recently bestowed Ian Frazerthe title of ‘‘God’s gift to women’’ for his research team’s part in developing a vaccine to help control
cervical cancer. Here Frazer discusses this work and the science behind the vaccine.

Designed to prevent infection with some types of human papillomavirus (HPV), a vaccine (Gardasil) recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in 9- to 26-year-old women in the USA is the first pharmaceutical compound specifically developed to prevent
the common human malignancy cervical cancer. Another similar product (Cervarix) should become available next year. These are conventional protein-adjuvant vaccines, comprising alum adjuvanted viral capsids of multiple HPV serotypes assembled from recombinant viral capsid protein. The vaccines, delivered systemically, induce neutralizing antibody, protecting against infection with the incorporated HPV serotypes in skin and at mucosal surfaces. The nature of HPV infection, the consequent health problems, and the host response to infection have been defined during vaccine development,
which has proven a considerable exercise in epidemiology and public health research. The considerable time lag between vaccine deployment and public health benefit, together with perceived effects of vaccine availability on human sexual behavior, is currently influencing vaccine introduction. Nevertheless, HPV vaccines should eventually eliminate a number of epithelial cancers
and reduce the annual burden of cancer deaths globally by 5%–10%.

Read Full Study…

August 29, 2010

• Target: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon
• Sponsored by: Care2.com

In a desperate attempt to prevent sexual assault and teen pregnancy, Cameroonian mothers are literally ironing their daughters’ breasts with hot stones to make them less attractive.

Breast ironing is not an acceptable form of pregnancy prevention or a replacement for sex education.

The ritual affects a quarter of all women in Cameroon and as soon as they show signs of puberty, sometimes as young as nine. The girls cry as they’re held down and scalding hot stones are pressed onto their breasts.

The possible damage of this practice can be severe, including bruises, deformities, abscesses, and even the disappearance of one or both breasts.

Cameroon mothers may think breast ironing is “for their [daughters'] own good,” but it’s not the way to prevent sexual violence and early pregnancy. Urge UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to speak out against breast ironing and to advocate for adequate sex education in Cameroon.

Please sign the petition…

[X-posted at Hoyden About Town]

So I’m sitting watching the evening news, and on comes a chap telling us women and girls that we oughtta go and get more Pap smears. Then on comes a woman to talk about how Pap screening rates are going down in young women, and to speculate about possible causes for this. The cervical cancer vaccine comes up, as does the “awkwardness” of the test, and our inappropriate embarrassment, which we apparently need to get over.

What I don’t hear addressed in the mainstream media in these discussions of Pap screening? Well, lots of things, like heterosexism, and ignorance about Pap age/sexual experience guidelines, and sexual assault (inside and outside the medical system). However, the one that really stood out in my mind today is also a factor that isn’t going to be fixed by lecturing women. Fatphobic abuse in the medical system.

There has been a fair bit of talk around the feminist traps about some of the other factors, especially the aftermath of sexual assault and its effects on medical interactions. I’m not going to go into that in this post, but it’s a huge, huge issue. What I would like to talk about for a moment, not because it’s more important but just because I have a first-person anecdote, is medical fatphobia.

We know fatphobia kills. In all sorts of ways, in all sorts of settings. And one way in which it can kill is the horrendous tendency of doctors – quite a few doctors, from the stories I hear around the place – to trap women and girls on their backs so that they can shame them while they’re vulnerable. And what they don’t realise, or don’t care about, is just how long-lasting the effects of this can be – and not in a good way.

Medical education materials abound with motherhood statements about ‘Preventive Medicine’ and ‘Lifestyle Intervention’ and ‘Opportunistic Behavioural Education’. General practitioners are exhorted, over and over again, to take any and all opportunities they can to tell people they’re fat. Really, over and over. And OVER. And doctors, labouring under the mistaken impression that this will cause said people to magically become skinny and therefore ‘healthy’, go ahead and do it, then smugly boast about it between themselves, sighing about how no-one ever listens to them. Or, perhaps, under the impression that they can then self-satisfiedly sit back and tick a box on the chart about how they’ve engaged in initial Lifestyle Education, which they learned all about at the last Lap-Band seminar.

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This is an excellent article about women-shaming – and how the medical establishments plays into the victimization of women.  Make sure you read the comments….there are many share experiences of abuse of disregard.

When God decided to make the first woman and donated her to the first man as a housewarming (or should I say garden-warming) present, God must have carelessly hurried her plumbing design. Soon after creation women’s botched plumbing began to weigh heavily on His Mind.

According to the Evangelical — or any literal reading — of the Jewish/Christian Scriptures (and/or the Koran) — women started off as a mere afterthought created after everything else, even after squirrels, sheep and whales. “Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air… But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”

The entire Female/Plumbing Situation is one of those many, many things (including the creation of Lucifer, shellfish and Canaanites) that, according to the Scriptures, got out of hand during (or soon after) creation and for which the Lord was and — according to Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Muslims and conservative Christians — apparently still is heartily sorry!

God issued countless factory recalls and complex revised owner’s manual updates enforced by strict rules about how to deal with women, fix women, repair women, curb women, keep women in line and, if need be, kill women if they didn’t keep God’s many Women-Managing Rules.

It turns out that if you take the Bible (and/or the Koran) literally God just hates bodily fluids!

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Pune Mirror

India
By Vishakha Sharma
Posted On Monday, July 12, 2010 at 11:31:36 PM

In a country which sees lakhs of people living below the poverty line, menstruation is a harbinger of shame for women who try to make ends meet.

Where people cannot afford two square meals, buying sanitary napkins from the market is out of the question. So does this mean that such women will have to be relegated to dark corners of their shanties during those difficult days?

Not any more. Goonj, a Delhi-based NGO, has come to the rescue of such women with their re-usable cloth napkins, which are sourced from clothes donated by those who are better off than the beneficiaries.

A packed of five such napkins is available for just Rs 3.

Goonj works across 11 states in India, including Maharashtra and has been functional for over five years now. And more importantly, many college students, from educational institutes like the IITs, work with the NGO in its endeavour.

Talking to Mirror, founder of Goonj, Anshu Gupta, said, “The organisation is over five years old with over 300 volunteers.

The main reason behind the production of these sanitary napkins is to end the troubles of poor women during their difficult days.

Also, since these women are from the lower strata of society, they can’t afford sanitary napkins that are available in the market. To ensure comfort and hygiene, we decided to make these napkins cost effective. Each packet containing five napkins costs Rs 3.”

Gupta added, “The production process is easily replicable in any part of India or the world. We conduct village-level meetings to bring the tabooed subject out in the open.

Women now comfortably talk about the subject. The napkins are handmade, without any technological input. We employ women from nearby slums for the purpose.”

Case studies
Sahiba from Muzaffarnagar: I have been facing a shortage of clothes to be used during my periods. When we don’t have clothing to cover our bodies, how can we afford to spare cloth for use during menstruation?

I was therefore left with no other option but to use nothing during my periods, which led to spoiling of my clothes with bloodstains.

I remained closeted inside the house during the entire menstrual cycle, as I used to feel ashamed to venture outside.

But my mother used to understand my problem. Many times, others humiliated me because of the bloodstains on my shirt. Now, my life has completely changed after Goonj distributed the sanitary napkins.

I am grateful to Goonj for this. Several girls like me face similar problems, but they have no option. Goonj is like a godsend for girls like us.

Shalu from Saharanpur: Two-three days before my periods started, I’d feel anxious, thinking what to use during this time.

I had nothing with me, except for a little terricot cloth. In school, some of my friends buy sanitary pads from the market. But I can’t do so as my parents are very poor.

My father is a tangewala and his income is also very low. I have spoilt everything from pillow covers to bedsheets and was even beaten up by my mother for that.

When I asked my classmate for pads, she said, “These are not for free. They are expensive, and I get them from the market. How can I give them to you for free?”

When I was sharing my experience in a meeting, my friends told me to approach Goonj.

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What we take for granted…..if these women cannot afford menstrual cloths how can they possible afford birth control?

July 10, 2010

You would think, if given evidence about thousands of potential rapists, who are quite possibly committing repeat offenses, that police departments across the country would see rape kits for what they are – an opportunity to stop horrifying crimes.  But, as Ximena Ramirez has written for Care2 before, county and state governments are surprisingly willing to let rape kits pile up untested, sometimes promising to take action and then letting the kits gather dust.  California has been the main focus for the huge numbers of untested rape kits, but now the Human Rights Watch has begun to investigate Illinois and discovered some truly appalling statistics.

In a report titled “I Used To Think The Law Would Protect Me: Illinois’ Failure To Test Rape Kits,” the HRW describes the results of their comprehensive data analysis of 127 of 267 jurisdictions.  They found that only 1,474 of the 7,494 rape kits booked into evidence since 1995 had been tested – just around 20%.  That means that the state of Illinois sees 80 percent of the crimes as not worth investigating – something, as the report’s author points out, that is insulting to the rape victims and a threat to the common well-being and security of all of the state’s residents.  Which of course begs the question: whose side are the police really on?

But here there is some direct action to be taken.  The 2010 Sexual Assault Evidence Submission Act passed the Illinois state legislature this spring; it would require that every rape kit booked into evidence be sent to a crime laboratory.  However, this bill still hasn’t been signed by Governor Pat Quinn, so this is where you come in – especially if you’re an Illinois resident (but even if you’re not), email the governor and let him know that this horrible track record regarding women’s rights needs to be stopped.

Read more: illinois, womens rights, rape kits, sexual assault, untested rape kits

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July 6, 2010

“FGM (female genital mutilation) is unusual in Ireland, so people will be shocked and you have to explain over and over. That’s what makes people say, ‘No, I don’t want to go [to the doctor]‘” says Ifrah Ahmed of the End FGM European campaign led by Amnesty International.

Greater awareness among healthcare workers in Ireland is needed to help women who have undergone ‘female circumcision’, writes CATHERINE REILLY

A WINNING SMILE fails to conceal 19-year-old Amina’s* horrific burden, one that can render her bed-bound for days at the asylum seeker hostel in Co Galway where she lives.

Aged six, her family sanctioned a local “circumciser” in her native Somalia to mutilate her genitals, and the consequences reverberate across time and place and within mind, body and soul. When her period comes, it feels as though “the cutting” is happening all over again.

“Oh my God the pain, you are afraid of the pain,” says the teenager, her neat hijab framing a welcoming face. “I am like, ‘Oh my God, let it not come, let it not come’.”

She endures chronic stress, frequent infections, back pain and is anaemic, all likely traceable to that watershed day when she was mutilated alongside three other girls.

More than 2,500 migrant women in Ireland are estimated to have suffered some form of female genital mutilation (FGM) in their countries, according to AkiDwA, a national network of African and migrant women.

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June 18, 2010

When most of us think of female genital mutilation, we probably think of faraway places. Well, peel off those blinders. In 1997, our very own Department of Health and Human Services estimated that 168,000 girls and women living in the United States had been or were at risk of being subjected to some form of the abhorrent practice known as female genital mutilation (FGM).

Not only is FGM being practiced relatively widely in the United States, it’s happening in the most hallowed halls of American medical science. In fact, the head of the pediatric urology department at Cornell University’s New York Presbyterian Hospital — which is often ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the country — has been operating on young girls who suffer from what he (and likely the girls’ guardians) have decided is “clitorimegaly,” or oversized clitorises.

In order to relieve these girls from what seems like little more than a cosmestic issue, Dr. Dix P. Poppas cuts out parts of the clitoris’ shaft, saving the glans, or tip, for reattachment. Poppas triumphantly calls the procedure — rebranded a clitoroplasty — a “nerve sparing” one unlike the FGMs practiced in other countries.

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May 21, 2010

By Michele Swenson

Assuming responsibility for personal and institutional sins has not been a strong suit of the Church, fallen evangelicals, or corporate plunderers. It’s easier to blame a media campaign against the Church, or in Rep. Mark Souder’s case, a “poisonous” Washington environment seeking to twist “personal failing … for political gain.”

The political right has labored mightily for over three decades to link the term “entitlement” to social programs such as nutrition, health and child support — useful distractions from enormous entitlements bestowed on corporate power brokers who have corroded common culture and brought us to the economic brink.

Newt Gingrich denounced food programs for children as “entitlements,” and attributed budget deficits solely to social spending. Yet, at the time of 1996 welfare reform corporate subsidies and tax breaks of $167 billion in 1995 alone, totaled more than twice as much as the $67 billion all social welfare programs combined. Nor is expansive defense spending questioned: Defense “creates jobs and protects worship,” reasoned majority whip Sen. Trent Lott on Pat Robertson’s show in 1995.

Right-wing culture/class warfare consistently pits the privileged against the “undeserving underclass” — an epithet applied by a James Dobson affiliate. The doctor denounced the ideal of universal health care while ascribing health costs to the “social pathology of our underclass,” principally “irresponsible sex acts that lead to abortion.” Contemporary Tea Parties express the same class/race discontent. While rightfully rejecting the widening disparity of wealth created by ultraconservative policies, theirs is the wrong diagnosis and prescription – defense of corporate greed and abolishment of government oversight.

The right has marginalized and imputed inferiority and illicit sexual behavior to the least politically powerful. Serial adulterer Gingrich led congressional efforts to selectively apply economic sanctions, while attributing every perceived social ill to the “sexual sin” of women and minorities — not to economic, but to moral, poverty. Nor are children exempt from blame: The latest confessed adulterer, Rep. Mark E. Souder (R-Indiana), champion of traditional marriage and abstinence-only education who touts a 100% rating from the National Right to Life Committee, dismissed David Koresh’s crimes of rape of young girls at Waco as “sex with consenting minors.”

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re: Cycling
May 21st, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Laura Eldridge’s new book In Our Control: The Complete Guide to Contraceptive Choices for Women (Seven Stories Press, 2010) isn’t kidding with that subtitle. The last time I remember reading so much detail about contraceptive options was poring over Our Bodies, Ourselves when I was in my 20s.

Eldridge reviews every method of birth control known to modern woman–and, importantly, some that aren’t widely known. She even briefly reviews the history of contraception in 19th and 20th centuries, reminding us that birth control is not a new invention. People, especially female-bodied people, have struggled to control their fertility from pretty much the first moment humans figured out how it worked.

In Our Control differs from Our Bodies, Ourselves in offering more than just the mechanics of both hormonal and barrier methods: Eldridge provides a history of each method and analysis of the political and cultural contexts of their use in the 21st century U.S.

For example, the chapter about the morning-after pill (also known by either the brand name Plan B or as emergency contraception, EC) discusses the political battle to achieve Federal Drug Administration approval, including Susan Wood’s resignation from the FDA’s Office of Women’s Health over what she believed to be “willful disregard of scientific evidence showing Plan B to be safe.”

Eldridge extensively addresses the relationship between birth control and menstruation, focusing one chapter specifically on the use of hormonal contraception to reduce or eliminate menstrual cycles. She draws upon a wide range of resources to illustrate the cultural attitudes and contexts of menstruation, from stories of the role of birth-control pill co-developer John Rock’s Catholicism in the three-weeks-on/one-week-off dosing of the first pill to a Saturday Night Live parody of advertising schemes for menstrual suppression drugs (with Annuale, you’ll menstruate only once a year, but hold on to your fucking hat!).

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