The Femitist

Good news and bad news on alcohol - The Washington Post

This article discusses breast cancer risk and alcohol consumption. It discusses that women who drink increase their risk for breast cancer but that women who drink red wine reduce their risk for heart disease. In the end, heart disease kills more women than breast cancer.

The article goes on to talk about the beneficial health effects of resveratrol. However, this study does not use a matched random sample and it does not acknowledge that breast cancer risk factors and genetics are not homogeneous considerations. Many women get breast cancer who never drink alcohol and many women who drink heavily live their entire life without getting breast cancer or cardiovascular diseases. Risk factors and genetics are considerations but they should not be the primary focus of the research.

Like in the article “Case studies in the co-production of populations and genetics: The making of ‘at risk popualtions’ in BRCA genetics” this study is very narrowly focus which diminishes its credibility. In the BRCA genetics studies, scientists focused on culture and eugenics as factors in BRCA mutation. They especially focused on European Jews, instead of focusing on cancer itself. Further, they looked at BRCA mutation as the key risk factor of cancer but in the big picture many women who have BRCA mutation will never get cancer and many women who get cancer do not have the BRCA mutation.

These studies should focus on multiple approaches to the problem, specifically examining the sociocultural context of breast cancer. Many studies show us that lifestyle is a big factor in cancer so we should be encouraging lifestyle changes rather than focusing on ancestry.

# journals

Carol J. Scott, M.D.: Transform Breast Cancer Awareness Month to Breast Cancer Action Year Round

This popular news article mirrors some of the ideas expressed in the paper Cancer Butch by S. Lochlann Jain. Jain feels that cancer in the United States, especially breast cancer, is “a retrieval of affect and death and illness in the context of profit.”

In this popular news article article, Dr. Carol Scott encourages people to help a cancer survivor rather than donating money to pink campaigns.

Studies have indicated that stress can affect tumor growth and spread, but the precise biological mechanisms underlying these effects are not well understood. Psychological factors such as helplessness/hopelessness/pessimism tend to lead to poorer prognoses. A new study that is getting lots of attention found that “psychological stress may play a role in the development of aggressive breast cancer, especially among minority populations.” This study showed that after diagnosis, black and Hispanic breast cancer patients reported higher levels of stress than whites, and that stress was associated with tumor aggressiveness.

What can you do to transform Breast Cancer Awareness Month into Breast Cancer Action Year Round?

Almost every cancer center has a support group for breast cancer survivors. If you want to make a difference beyond Breast Cancer Awareness Month, discover how you can support a breast cancer survivor support group in your area. If you know a survivor who is struggling with stress, anxiety, depression or hopelessness, please connect them with a support group. Maybe offer to provide a ride or take care of kids to free them to attend.

Dr. Carol Scott says that stress is a big risk factor in most cancers and that stress and anxiety can cause breast cancer survivors to relapse. Her call to action is for concerned citizens to find cancer support groups at local cancer centers and work with survivors to decrease stress in their life.

Jain’s description of cancer as a “capitalistic disease” is very disturbing and unsettling to me, but it is also very true. In class we discussed that “pink” and “red” campaigns are pretty much pointless because chronic disease is very profitable to pharmaceutical companies. Several in class, myself included, feel that pharmaceutical companies would go to great lengths to prevent a cancer or HIV/AIDS cure from ever entering the market because they make so much profit from cancer and HIV/AIDS drugs.

Therefore, Dr. Carol Scott’s advice is a great alternative to donating money to “pink” and “red” campaigns. Instead we should help the victims of cancer, adding a human connection and human empathy to a disease that is dehumanized in the interest of profit.

# journals

The Men Behind The War On Women

This video talks about the religious men who are behind the war on women including denying access to reproductive health, contraception, abortion and in some cases even vasectomy in married men who don’t want to impregnate their wives.

We constantly hear about the “Big 4” issues in American Politics - gay marriage, reproductive rights, environmentalism and “intelligent” design - but lately abortion has been at the top of the agenda for the religious right. In Mississippi they went as far as trying to pass a bill considering a fertilized egg a legal person which, in essence, would ban most forms of contraception and ban abortion even if it means death to a mother.

Fortunately this bill was voted down in Mississippi but it doesn’t change that fact that the “right” is more concerned with their war on women than any other issue in American politics. According to the article The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles by Emily Martin:

The stereotypical imagery might also encourage people to imagine that what results from the interaction of egg and sperm-a fertilized egg-is the result of deliberate “human” action at the cellular level. Whatever the intentions of the human couple, in this microscopic “culture” a cellular “bride” (or femme fatale) and a cellular “groom” (her victim) make a cellular baby. Rosalind Petchesky points out that through visual representations such as sonograms, we are given “images of younger and younger, and tinier and tinier, fetuses being ‘saved.’ ” This leads to “the point of visibility being ‘pushed back’ indefinitely.”Endowing egg and sperm with intentional action, a key aspect of personhood in our culture, lays the foundation for the point of viability being pushed back to the moment of fertilization. This will likely lead to greater acceptance of technological developments and new forms of scrutiny and manipulation, for the benefit of these inner “persons”: court-ordered restrictions on a pregnant woman’s activities in order to protect her fetus, fetal surgery, amniocentesis, and rescinding of abortion rights, to name but a few examples.”

Like many other things in science, Emily Martin points out the sexist vocabulary and metaphors associated with human sexuality in science. This area of science is, in my opinion, one of the least objective parts because so many entities are involved including the Church, government, political interests and scientists with their own agendas.

Every year Americans fight back more and more against the War on Women but every year we continue to have the Church throwing lots of money at legislation to limit women’s reproductive rights. I feel that the best solution to this problem would be to begin educating children about their bodies from a young age and fighting harder than ever to keep the religious right out of our secular government.

To quote Rachel Maddow, the tea party wants “government so small that it can fit inside of every woman’s uterus”. This has to stop. Education is the key.

# journals

Jane Goodall Talks Women In Science

When an 11 year-old Jane Goodall first began telling people in 1945 that she wanted to go to Africa, her declaration was often met with laughter. Goodall, who loved apes ever since infancy, when her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee, was rebuked for many reasons: “We didn’t have any money and World War Two was raging … but mostly because I was a girl — I was the wrong sex,” she told The Huffington Post. Her family, she said, told her, “Jane get real. You know girls don’t do this kind of thing, living with animals in the forest.” Now 77, Goodall has become the world’s leading expert on chimpanzees. She travels 300 days out of the year, and holds five professorships, 24 degrees and more than 60 awards. And she doesn’t think being a woman kept her from “doing this kind of thing” at all. “In fact,” said Goodall, “my gender, I think it helped me.”

Drawing parallels with many of our discussions in class, women are dangerously underrepresented in science. And even when women are involved, they are usually paid less than men, given fewer opportunities and subjected to discriminatory masculine-dominated scientific vocabulary (as discussed in African Women Pursuing Graduate Studies in the Sciences: Racism, Gender Bias and Third World Marginality).

Consistant with the era she grew up in, Jane Goodall faced many roadblocks to entering the field of Zoology. However, in some ways, Goodall feels that being a woman helped her. She was largely ignored by men because they didn’t respect her enough as a female scientist to see her as competition.

Her gender worked in her favor, too, in her interactions with African communities, she said. She was doing field research in Tanzania just a year after the country gained independence and found that while there was a mistrust of white men who had controlled the country under colonialism, “They didn’t see me as a woman being a threat — they were much more likely to help me achieve what I wanted to achieve.”

Jane’s story has similarities and differences to Evelyn Hammonds in the article Never Meant to Survive: A Black Woman’s Journey. Because of her white privilege, Jane did not have to work as hard as Evelyn did, but she did still have to work twice as hard as a comparable man and deal with a lot of sexism out in the field, especially in the African communities she works in.

Like Evelyn, Jane Goodall is a revered scientist today and one of the most respected scientists in her field. Hopefully we can learn from their stories as a culture and work to advance women and minorities in science. Despite being “born the wrong sex”, Jane Goodall conquered all odds and pushed us further as a human race. Without her contributions we wouldn’t know nearly as much as we do about non-human primates. And since modern humans are evolved from primates, we wouldn’t know nearly as much about ourselves either.

Fatherhood depletes testosterone, study finds - Los Angeles Times

This article is related to class discussion on gender roles (9/8), gender being a social construct (9/13) and issues relating to LGBTQ identities as discussed in our introductory paper.

The study addressed in this article suggests that “becoming a father may make you less of a man” by decreasing testosterone levels but goes on to indicate that “men are evolutionary wired to help raise their children”.

The indication is that participatory fathers become “softer” and more nurturing to their children, decreasing testosterone.

Research on 624 Philippine men who were 21 years old indicated that men with higher testosterone levels at the beginning of the study were more likely to become fathers, but that fathers actively involved in parenting saw decreased testosterone levels by 43% in the morning and 49% in the evening when compared to the single men (control) group.

Two parent households with full participation by both parents strongly correlates with more productive societies with lower violent crime and more harmony.

This is significant because:

Traditional gender roles of masculine fathers and feminine mothers are rapidly changing.
Non-traditional families are on the rise -> same-sex couples raising children and single women raising children.
Even among heterosexual couples, we see less traditional gender roles. “Stay at home Dads” are on the rise as well as situations where both parents work full time. Traditional gender roles are becoming blurred or in some cases even reversed.

Statistics indicate (source 1) (source 2):

Single family households are 5x more likely to be poor than two-parent households (7.8% of two-parent households below the poverty line versus 38.4% of single family households)
39% of jail inmates lived in one-parent households
A study of 13,986 women in jail showed that more than half had absent fathers.
INTERPOL studied 39 countries and found a high correlation between single family households and children/teens who commit violent crimes.

The implication is that “feminized” men are good for society - full parental participation inversely correlates with poverty and crime.

Increase in diabetes: ‘A public health emergency in slow motion’ - Chicago Sun-Times

This article is related to class discussion on 9/13 regarding women, race and prevalence of disease. In class we discussed that blacks and black women in particular are more likely to get diseases, have diseases untreated, suffer major complications from disease and die from disease when compared to whites.

This is due to a combination of:

Poverty
Discrimination
Ignorance resulting from poverty and discrimination
Fear of doctors and the medical “establishment” as a result of years of abuses dating back to times of slavery and still continuing today in the inner cities.

As we discussed in class, my research confirms that “sensitive groups” (class on 9/13) are much more likely (25.34%) to contract diabetes then majority groups.

I researched figures on race, gender, age and diabetes in the US from the NIH (source) with some interesting results:

The NHW (non-hispanic white) group has the highest overall prevalence of diabetes, but most of this is Type 1 (genetic) diabetes. Whites constitute a very small percentage of Type 2 diabetes. The two racial groups with the highest prevalence of Type 2 diabetes overall are AI (American Indians) at around 40% and NHB (non-hispanic blacks) at around 37%.

As our government continues to look for places to save money, public healthcare and education continues to be cut. But as education and healthcare are cut, diabetes, obesity and other preventable conditions increase (direct linear correlation). Since these conditions are highest among the poorest populations, populations that traditionally receive government aid, it would seem common sense that it is to everyone’s benefit to focus on health education programs and preventative care in the inner cities. Not only will it save lives, but it will save millions.

Comparing diabetes rates between whites and blacks by State (source), I found that overall, black Americans are 25.34% more likely than whites to have diabetes. The states with the most disparity between the races are:

West Virginia (46.5%)
Nebraska (43.4%)
Oregon (43.2%)

Oregon was a surprise to me because it is a relatively developed and liberal state.

Rick Perry Under Fire by Republican Rivals for Requiring HPV Vaccine for Girls - NYTimes.com

This video relates to women’s rights and women as a protect class (class discussion 9/13). It also relates to the reading “Histories of the Human Subject” by Stephen Epstein.

Republicans, through making HPV vaccination a political issue, are literally killing women to “protect” them. They are convinced that HPV vaccination will cause people to be extra promiscuous, so instead they prefer them to get HPV. They know that HPV leads to cervical cancer which leads to death, but the religious right sees this as a consequence of “sin” (or sex outside of marriage).

The Republican candidate Michele Bachmann has gone as far as suggesting that the HPV vaccination causes mental retardation, despite the evidence that overwhelmingly suggests that it does not (source).

So, like the exclusion of women from research in the interest of protecting potential babies, this Republican wedge issue literally lets women contract HPV and cervical cancer in the interest of protecting them. It takes away their freedom to protect them.

Religious dogma, emotion and ignorance seem to be key factors as well.

The fact that Rick Perry required the vaccine in Texas should be celebrated, not protested. The fact of Merck lobbying him to approve the legislation is irrelevant; even if one female life can be saved by preventing HPV it was a good measure. And in the long run, it will save the government money. One shot is a lot cheaper than chemo.

Video from Young Turks

Video from Jay Leno

Lapses by Leaders Seen in 1940s Syphilis Tests on Prisoners - NYTimes.com

This article relates to discussions in class from 9/13 and 9/15 and the readings “Histories of the Human Subject” and “Medical Apartheid”.

It relates to the studies in Alabama and Guatemala regarding Syphilis and Gonorrhea.

The United States has a history of civil rights abuses, human rights abuses and “gross violations of ethics” dating back to our treatment of slaves in the 1600s-1800s and our treatment of women and minority groups today.

One of the best examples of this are the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the testing on prisoners both in Guatemala and the United States.

The most alarming part of these studies is that they were fully supported, funded and in some cases even performed by the government itself. With the exception of the study on American prisoners, the studies were even publicly discussed in medical and science journals.

These studies along with the general abuse and neglect of minority groups has led to widespread Iatrophobia (fear of doctors) among minority groups in the United States, namely NHB (non-hispanic blacks) and AI (American Indian) demographics.