Entries for March 2009

Nearly 18 months ago, I spoke to Diane Harper, a gynecologist who conducted some of the clinical trials on Merck's Gardasil vaccine, which protects against the cervical cancer-causing human papillomavirus, or HPV. At that time, I was trying to decide whether to get my own 12-year-old vaccinated; I was worried the vaccine was too new for us to know its full safety profile, and I ultimately decided to delay giving the vaccine to my daughter until she was older.

Harper told me then that the vaccine's efficacy hadn't been tested in anyone under age 16, and she wasn't sure whether it even worked in preteens. On the flip side, she also told me that she frequently administered the vaccine to women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, for whom the vaccine is not approved. Many of these women were hitting the dating scene again after divorce or widowhood and wanted protection against the sexually transmitted virus.

To snip or not? Any parent of an infant son faces this circumcision question; for some, like me, it's a no-brainer. I had my two sons circumcised in accordance with my Jewish faith. Others, though, would like to know if there are any health reasons in favor of circumcision. Well, a study of 5,000 initially uncircumcised Ugandan men in this week's New England Journal of Medicine found that once the men underwent circumcision, their rate acquiring herpes virus infection plunged by 28 percent and they were 35 percent less likely to get infected with human papillomavirus (HPV), which is responsible for genital warts and, in women, cervical cancer.

Previous research has shown that circumcision reduces infection with the HIV virus by 60 percent—although other studies have shown no difference in rates of certain sexually transmitted diseases between circumcised and uncircumcised men.

I recently spoke with actress Suzanne Somers about her enthusiastic use of "bioidentical" hormones to combat menopausal hot flashes and the ravages of aging. Bioidentical hormones are products that are chemically identical to what's made in a woman's body. Some are approved as medications; others are supplements. Many of Somers's best-selling books, including her latest, Breakthrough: Eight Steps to Wellness, strongly encourage women to use bioidentical estrogen and progesterone supplements after they hit menopause. Since these are identical to the hormones made by the human body, Somers reasons, they are safe and even beneficial to take well into old age—whereas, she believes, traditional hormone therapies, with slightly different molecular structures, are harmful. She has a cadre of experts to back up her claims and recently touted the antiaging benefits of bioidenticals on the Oprah Winfrey Show to cheers from Oprah, who herself takes the supplements.

After speaking with Somers, though, I thought I would run some of her statements by a medical expert, Adriane Fugh-Berman, a physician and associate professor in the complementary and alternative medicine master's program at Georgetown University Medical Center. (Fugh-Berman takes no money from pharmaceutical companies.) I inserted Fugh-Berman's comments below Somers's answers and also posted the original podcast. Edited excerpts of our conversation:

The Food and Drug Administration may soon be offering the Plan B "morning-after" pill to girls of all ages. A federal judge yesterday ordered the agency to reconsider its decision to approve the over-the-counter product only for those over age 18. Within 30 days, the FDA must make Plan B available to 17-year-olds. Beyond that, the judge instructed the agency to review whether to make emergency contraception—which can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex—available without any age restriction.

Reproductive rights activists hailed the ruling. "Today's decision is an important victory that will help increase women's access to contraception," Louise Melling, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a press release that landed in my inbox. "It is the first step toward ending years of political interference by the FDA regarding Plan B and will give more women the opportunity to prevent an unintended pregnancy."

Phil Tetlock and Barbara Mellers were in a race against time to save their 15-year-old daughter, Jenny. As I reported last summer, Jenny developed a degenerative muscle disease nearly two years ago, soon after being vaccinated against the cervical-cancer-causing HPV. She became nearly completely paralyzed, though her mind was perfectly intact and she could still enjoy her pet parakeet, Hannah Montana, and Twilight.

I've been E-mailing Phil regularly over the past year, and up until our last E-mail, one week ago, he had been holding out hope that they would be able to find a cure for his daughter—or to at least determine if the human papillomavirus vaccine called Gardasil had caused his daughter's illness, most likely a juvenile form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka Lou Gehrig's disease). Sadly, the clock ran out last Sunday, and Jenny passed away.

I have to say, the pope has strange timing. During the same week that D.C. health officials report that at least 3 percent of residents carry the HIV virus that causes AIDS, Pope Benedict XVI declares during a flight to Africa that the distribution of condoms won't "resolve" the AIDS problem but will actually make it worse. A New York Times editorial yesterday took the pope to task, saying that while he has "every right to express his opposition to the use of condoms on moral grounds...he deserves no credence when he distorts scientific findings about the value of condoms in slowing the spread of the AIDS virus."

After all, the latest analysis of studies from the Cochrane Collaboration shows that condoms reduce the transmission of HIV by 80 percent, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls latex condoms "highly effective" at preventing the spread of AIDS when they're used consistently and correctly.

In what's being called a "freak skiing accident," actress Natasha Richardson apparently suffered a devastating brain injury on Monday that, it appears, she won't recover from. The latest news reports say that Richardson is brain dead and that her friends and family are gathering at her side today to say their goodbyes.

Let me first point out that Richardson's brain injury reportedly occurred on a beginner's ski slope, while she was having a private lesson with an instructor. She wasn't heli-skiing off some dangerous ledge in the middle of nowhere. And, according to authorities at the ski resort, she took all the proper precautions after being injured. Although she didn't even have a concussion, she was immediately examined by a physician and then taken to a hospital after she developed a severe headache.

My friend Chrissi pointed out this YouTube video to me yesterday showing just how much Photoshop can do to turn an unattractive, obese woman into a size-4 stunner. Trouble is, most of us don't see our bodies digitally doctored and spend way too much time staring at our real selves in the mirror, comparing how we look to those "perfect" bodies that grace magazine covers. As a result, far too many of us punish ourselves with brutal diets or self-loathing thoughts. In fact, 1 in 10 of us partakes in behaviors—bingeing and overexercising, skipping meals, abusing laxatives—that are indicative of an eating disorder.

While women over 30 still can't get vaccinated against the human papillomavirus unless their doctor gives it to them off label, they may soon have a test to determine whether they've been infected with a cervical cancer-causing strain. Today the Food and Drug Administration approved the first DNA test that identifies two HPV strains, types 16 and 18, which are responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancers in the United States.

Gynecologists typically perform an HPV test along with regular Pap smears, and the current test won't tell you if you have a cancer-causing strain, though it will categorize the types into low risk, moderate risk, or high risk. A whopping 80 percent of us become infected with the sexually transmitted virus at some point in our lives, but most of the time, the virus clears on its own without causing problems like genital warts or cancer.

At first blush, the Obama administration's effort to focus on women sounds, well, fresh and exciting. Go to the White House website and you'll see that "women" are right there on the agenda along with the economy, taxes, and Iraq. That gives me a little pause as I wonder if gender-specific concerns are really as pressing as, say, the tanking stock market or ballooning unemployment. But then I heard about Obama's latest initiative, which was announced to me in an E-mail I received Wednesday from Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families.

"Today is your day. President Obama just created the first-ever White House Council on Women and Girls, and I was honored to attend the ceremony."

"Awwk!" That was my first reaction when I read a recent E-mail about new dangers lurking in my disposable water bottle, the one with a No. 1 recycling code stamped on the bottom that sits on my desk waiting to be refilled. There's a new study from Germany out today that tested the water in those bottles and found estrogenlike compounds, most likely leaching out from the plastic. These water bottles don't contain the notorious chemical bisphenol A, which is found in hard water bottles, baby bottles, and the plastic coatings of metal cans. (Studies of BPA indicate that high exposures could increase the risk of reproductive health problems and possibly breast, prostate, and ovarian cancers, which is why six leading baby bottle makers last week decided to ban it from their products.) The soft bottles do, though, contain other estrogenlike compounds, still unidentified, that could have the same harmful effects as BPA.