Girl in the Locker Room! ... because she and her friends don’t know the reality of a few short years back, they don’t recognize the threats to 21st century female life in the current political climate. We have to tell them. We have to tell them now. ...This is a cyber history project. Contribute stories about your own experiences by e-mail or comment on my running blog entries as a barrier-breaking generation gives context to contemporary female life. (how to contribute your real-life stories/recollections/anecdotes)

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Wednesday, October 06, 2004 The Curse In the previous post, the idea that no one talked about women's problems below the waist got me thinking just how secretive society used to be about menstruation and how as teenagers we suffered as a result. See my remembrance: The Curse. Maybe you remember how it was, or have worked hard to forget. How did we get to where there are prime time TV ads about menstruation cramps? Maybe a reader can trace the evolution...  -RH 9:31:26 PM    comment [] Why You Should Care About Science, and a Mouse   I am in Montreal at the 4th World Conference of Science Journalists, and Barbara Vanderhyden of the University of Ottawa is talking about her mouse. It is an extraordinary mouse, genetically engineered to reliably develop ovarian cancer. She and her team invented it last year, and now scientists and pharmaceutical companies are clamoring to study the mouse and try out various screening tests on blood and urine to see if ovarian cancer, usually detected too late to save women, can be identified early enough to make a difference.   What took so long to develop this mouse? Why are there no screening tests for the most lethal of gynecological cancers, which strikes, and invariably kills, 1 in 70 women?   Vanderhyden cites some classic reasons for the research delay. For one thing, “no one wants to talk about diseases below the waist” she says…pointing out that this was even true for prostate cancer in men, until Senator Bob Dole was afflicted. (I interviewed him on this topic for the Washington Post back in 1992…he spoke candidly in his Senate office, positioning himself in front of a roaring fire in the marble fireplace.)   Secondly, there are rarely survivors of ovarian cancer to serve as advocates for research…unlike breast cancer where those women with the pink ribbons incessantly call attention to the disease. Lastly, and sadly, there has been an historical dearth of research on women’s health issues. In 1992, while Dole was talking about prostate cancer, I wrote an article in the Washington Post “What Doctors Don’t Know About Women” after reading a government report on the state of women’s medical research. One telling finding, that got me especially annoyed, was that doctors knew next to nothing about the lowly uterine fibroid, one of the most common gynecological afflictions, which can range from periodically painful to a major health threat requiring hysterectomy.   For more info you can visit the Gilda Radner Familial Ovarian Cancer Registry….named for the Saturday Night Live comedian who died in 1989 of ovarian cancer at age 42.   -RH   8:45:39 AM    comment [] © Copyright 2005 Robin Herman. The Girl in the Locker Room™ name and design are trademarks owned by Robin Herman. Last update: 5/31/2005; 11:24:17 AM. Powered by