Mary Ann Liebert Inc., Publishers

Journal of Women’s Health

Sarah E. Tom, Rachel Cooper, Robert B. Wallace, and Jack M. Guralnik. Journal of Women’s Health. January 2012, 21(1): 10-16. doi:10.1089/jwh.2011.2745. Published in Volume: 21 Issue 1: January 12, 2012
Online Ahead of Print: October 4, 2011

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Read the complete article and related information at Type and Timing of Menopause and Later Life Mortality among Women in the Iowa Established Populations for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly (EPESE) Cohort

Activist Post

January 26, 2012

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Read the complete article and related information at Health Groups: Statins Linked to 300+ Negative Effects

InfoWars.com

Curt Linderman Sr.
Infowars.com
February 3, 2012

As of Dec. 2011, there have been 24,610 documented adverse reactions associated with the HPV vaccines, 3,269 have been serious. Given the fact that data from the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) database and the National Vaccine Information Center claim that less than 10% of adverse reactions are actually reported, these numbers could be far more frightening.

Sane Vax, an HPV vaccine victim’s advocacy group (www.sanevax.org) recently sent an open letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (1). In this letter and subsequent articles pertaining to HPV Vaccine injuries, it is explained that all drugs given a “fast track” or accelerated approval process through the Food and Drug Administration, are required to verify and prove the fast tracked drug is actually effective and safe through post marketing studies (2). Gardacil was one of those “fast tracked” drugs, despite the fact that I can’t seem to remember the epidemic of young women dropping in the streets, succumbing to cervical cancer. There was no reason to fast track such a vaccine. This kind of tactic should only be available for epidemic and pandemic viruses.

A recently published, and industry sponsored, study (3) conducted on 12,852 young women seems to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that HPV vaccines are not working and even seem to be causing cancers! Gardacil and Cervarix, the two HPV vaccines manufactured at this time, only vaccinate for a small number of the human papillomavirus strains and in this study, suggest that HPV vaccination was found to reduce HPV-16 infections by a mere 0.6% in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated women.

Sane Vax states that, in the very same study, 2.6% to 6.2% more HPV vaccinated young women experienced other high risk (carcinogenic) HPV infections than unvaccinated women! When one considers the drastic numbers of adverse reactions, the lack of proof that any post marketing studies are showing success for the vaccines and the outcry from parents regarding draconian measures from governments to force girls (and now boys) to get vaccinated, Secretary Sebellius, the HHS and the FDA should immediately stop the HPV vaccine recommendations and forcibly remove the product from the market.

Why on earth would they continue to mandate these vaccines to our young girls and boys, given the facts that you, the reader, have available now? Given the PAP smears and other gynecological efforts made available to girls around the western world, this vaccine will end up being a nightmare. These girls, believing that the FDA and Secretary Sebellius have done their homework and the vaccine is both safe and effective, will believe they are protected and be less likely to go to the doctor for their checkups. This alone will cost numerous lives. Add to this, the evidence from this most recent study that vaccinated girls are getting more cancers, and you have a recipe for disaster.

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Read the complete article and related information at HPV Vaccine Victim’s Advocacy Group Sends Open Letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

89.3 KPCC

Feb. 1, 2012 | By Stephanie O’Neill |

Daniel Hulshizer/AP

Obese women who take long-term birth control injection Depo-Provera may be at greater risk for developing diabetes, according to a new USC study.

Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine found that obese women who received the Depo-Provera injection become more resistant to insulin. That means they were less able to lower their blood sugar levels, which leaves them more susceptible Type 2 Diabetes.

Researchers compared the effects of the drug on 10 obese women and five women of healthier weight. Both groups became more insulin resistant after the injections, but the obese women stayed that way. The others were better able to compensate, by producing more insulin.

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Read the complete article and related information at USC study: Depo-Provera birth control may increase diabetes risk for obese women

Huff Post
Women

February 4, 2012

Yashar Ali
Writer at The Current Conscience

Earlier this year, I was watching a repeat episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” The guest on this particular episode was Dr. Oz, who was tasked with answering a series of health questions, many of which were related to women’s reproductive health.

After Dr. Oz answered a question about douching, Oprah turned to a gentleman who was sitting in the audience and (with some humor) apologized to him for being stuck listening to all the conversation about “women” stuff and being seen on TV for participating in an episode that dealt with, among other topics, menstruation and menopause.

The gentleman turned out to be Major League Baseball player Jim Thome, who plays for the Chicago White Sox. He had brought his wife to the Oprah show as a gift, as Oprah Show tickets were nearly impossible to come by.

Oprah’s interaction with Jim Thome left me fuming. Why should we feel bad for him? Why would Oprah feel bad for him? I am an Oprah fan, but her apology was uncharacteristic for someone who spends her life advocating for and helping women.

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t feel sorry for Jim Thome because he’s a wealthy, famous baseball player.

What I am saying is that we shouldn’t feel sorry for him because he’s a man and he doesn’t have to deal with the reality of any of the problems addressed on the Oprah show he sat in on. And instead of Oprah offering that Dr. Oz episode to Jim as an opportunity to learn more about a woman’s body — perhaps allowing him to be more supportive of his wife and female family members — he was offered an apology for having to sit in on a conversation about issues that are so central to a woman’s life.

Why is our culture so intent on protecting men from hearing about or discussing a woman’s reproductive health?

I’ve written about this phenomena in some of my previous posts. When some of the women in my life start talking about their menstrual cycles or anything else reproductive related, they stop themselves and warn me to stop listening, “But you don’t want to hear about this …”

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Read the complete article and related information at If Men Had Periods, Women Would Know All About It

Marcia G. Yerman - Reporting – Reviewing – Reflecting

February 3, 2102

The first time I saw Rachel Lloyd was in 2005, the year of the 70^th Annual Academy Awards. “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” had taken the honors for best song. Whenever I complained about that tune being showcased, people would remark, “Lighten up.” Yet when Lloyd  addressed an audience in Soho about the issue of human trafficking, she mentioned “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” using it to illustrate the disconnect between reality and the Hollywood version of life on the street .

Since then, while covering the topic of human trafficking, I have heard Lloyd talk at numerous events and panels. I have called her up for quotes and insights, like the time football star Lawrence Taylor was arrested. I had needed to get a lucid response on why the media was portraying an under-age trafficked girl as a “hooker.”

Lloyd always speaks the truth to power. It may be to a New York City police commissioner, or an affluent Manhattan audience learning for the first time that 13-year-old African-American girls in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn are being bought and sold. Lloyd frequently notes that they are part of an estimated 200,000-300,000 adolescents who are at risk annually for commercial sexual exploitation in the United States.

Consequently, it was no surprise to me that the memoir Lloyd had penned, Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself, would be a tough, gritty and brutally honest account. Lloyd traces how a difficult childhood led to a hair-raising journey that encompassed risk, recruitment, violent abuse, breaking free from sexual exploitation—and ultimately healing. She now is a top activist in the anti-trafficking movement.

Finding her purpose in working with girls “in the life,” Lloyd connects to those in crisis based on shared experiences, understanding without judgment, and respect. Founding Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) in 1998, Lloyd went back to school to attain her GED, going on to receive a Bachelors degree in Psychology from Marymount Manhattan College and a Masters in Applied Urban Anthropology from the City College of New York. She has racked up numerous awards for her efforts, all while “owning her experience.”

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Read the complete article and related information at “Girls Likes Us” — Rachel Lloyd’s Memoir Illuminates the Sexual Exploitation of Children

The New York Times

By DENISE GRADY
Published: January 29, 2012

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Bridgette Dunlap, a Fordham University law student, knew that the school’s health plan had to pay for birth control pills, in keeping with New York state law. What she did not find out until she was in an examining room, “in the paper dress,” was that the student health service — in keeping with Roman Catholic tenets — would simply refuse to prescribe them.

As a result, students have had to go to Planned Parenthood or private doctors to get prescriptions. Some, unable to afford the doctor visits, gave up birth control pills entirely. In November, Ms. Dunlap, 31, who was raised a Catholic and was educated at parochial schools, organized a one-day, off-campus clinic staffed by volunteer doctors who wrote prescriptions for dozens of women.

Many Catholic colleges decline to prescribe or cover birth control, citing religious reasons. Now they are under pressure to change. This month the Obama administration, citing the medical case for birth control, made a politically charged decision that the new health care law requires insurance plans at Catholic institutions to cover birth control without co-payments for employees, and that may be extended to students. But Catholic organizations are resisting the rule, saying it would force them to violate their beliefs and finance behavior that betrays Catholic teachings.

“We can’t just lie down and die and let religious freedom go,” said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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Read the complete article and related information at Ruling on Contraception Draws Battle Lines at Catholic Colleges

The Daily Beast

Feb 3, 2012 12:00 AM EST

Michelle Goldberg

If a Republican becomes president, says Michelle Goldberg, say goodbye to international programs providing birth control to women in desperately poor countries such as Liberia.

Gertrude Gorma Cole, a midwife in Liberia’s Bong County, is almost universally known as “Mother Dear.” A warm, grandmotherly presence in a traditional lappa dress, she has been practicing at least since the 1970s. In some ways, she is conservative. Speaking of Liberia’s disastrous teenage pregnancy rate—which is high even by West African standards—she blames both the social breakdown caused by the country’s savage civil war and the lax ideas of the international NGOs that swept into the country in its wake. “After the war, the NGO people came in and they brought ‘child rights,’ so the children became so loose, and even to discipline them, they will take you to the police,” she says. Western aid workers dispute this, insisting that the idea of Liberian kids informing on their parents is an urban legend. Still, her views speak to a level of distrust toward the humanitarian agencies that play an outsized role in governing the decimated nation.

Yet there is one thing Mother Dear does not distrust: the programs to provide birth control, which are largely supplied by USAID. In addition to being a midwife, Mother Dear is the county’s reproductive-health supervisor. When I tell her that support for international family planning is controversial in the U.S., and that some candidates for president would like to end it, she is shocked. “If they cut off funding for family planning, more mothers are going to die,” she says.

She’s worth listening to, because whatever effect the upcoming election has on the reproductive health of American women, the effect on women worldwide is likely to be even greater. I was in Liberia recently as part of a World Health Organization-sponsored trip to look at the future of funding for AIDS, TB, and malaria in an age of global austerity. But the country is also an object lesson in the potential global impact of our interminable culture wars.

Those culture wars have turned birth control into a significant issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. All of the Republican candidates have slammed the administration’s refusal to give religious institutions a broad exemption from the mandate that insurance cover family planning. One of them, Rick Santorum, has promised to use the presidency to speak out about “the dangers of contraception in this country,” and has said he believes states should have the right to ban it. Mitt Romney, the likely nominee, has laughed off threats to birth control as an absurd nonissue, but even he has pledged to eliminate Title X, the federal family-planning program founded under Richard Nixon.

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Read the complete article and related information at How a GOP Win Could Spell the End of Reproductive Health for Global Women

 New York Times

By REUTERS
Published: February 3, 2012 at 3:50 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation backed down from its decision to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and birth control services, following a massive outcry by supporters of the world’s largest breast cancer charity.

Komen’s decision had thrust the group into America’s deeply politicized debate over abortion rights and its apology on Friday may not satisfy the more vocal advocates on either side.

Planned Parenthood supporters, including local directors within Komen’s ranks, say Komen had come under pressure from anti-abortion activists. Social conservatives had lauded the move to disengage from Planned Parenthood and said it would win Komen new supporters.

“We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives,” Komen said in a statement on Friday signed by its board of directors and its founder Nancy Brinker.

Komen had said earlier this week it would cease to fund grants for breast cancer screening to Planned Parenthood under new rules to tighten eligibility. The guidelines excluded groups under investigation by U.S. authorities and Planned Parenthood is the subject of a probe by U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida who opposes abortion.

Planned Parenthood provides a variety of services – including reproductive healthcare, sex education, cancer screenings and information on sexually transmitted diseases – but its abortion role has put it at the forefront of the national debate.

Komen’s move prompted a protest campaign on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook that reached a fever pitch on Thursday. Local Komen chapters sent letters to headquarters opposing the move, and by late Thursday night, its board convened a special meeting.

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Read the complete article and related information at Cancer Group Backs Down on Cutting Off Planned Parenthood

Buenos Aires Herald

February 3, 2012

By Javier Cardenal Taján
BuenosAiresHerald.com staff

GlaxoSmithKline Argentina Laboratories Company was fined 400,000 pesos by Judge Marcelo Aguinsky following a report issued by the National Administration of Medicine, Food and Technology (ANMAT in Spanish) for irregularities during lab vaccine trials conducted between 2007 and 2008 that allegedly killed 14 babies.

Likewise, two doctors -Héctor Abate, and Miguel Tregnaghi- were fined with 300,000 pesos each for irregularities during the studies.

The charges included experimenting with human beings as well falsifying parental authorizations so babies could participate in vaccine-trials conducted by the laboratory from 2007 to 2008.

Since 2007, 15,000 children under the age of one from Mendoza, San Juan and Santiago del Estero have been included in the research protocol, a statement of what the study is trying to achieve. Babies were recruited from poor families that attended to public hospitals.

A total of seven babies died in Santiago del Estero; five in Mendoza; and twoo in San Juan.

Pediatrician Ana Marchese, who reported the case through the Argentine Federation of Health Professionals (FESPROSA in Spanish), and was working at the Eva Perón children’s public hospital in Santiago del Estero when the studies were being conducted, said this morning in conversations with Continental AM radio that “GSK Argentina set an protocol at the hospital, and recruited several doctors working there.”

“These doctors took advantage of many illiterate parents whom take their children for treatment by pressuring and forcing them into signing these 28-page consent forms and getting them involved in the trials.”

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Read the complete article and related information at GSK fined after over vaccine trials; 14 babies reported dead