In Her Own Right The Institute of Medicine's Guide to Women's Health Issues (1997) / Chapter Skim
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1 Why Another Book on Women's Health?
1 Why Another Book on Women's Health?
Pages 3-12
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From page 3... ...
EXPERTS QUESTION SAFETY OF MAJOR BREAST CANCER STUDY, the heavy type proclaims. A line of smaller print identifies the man, a medical school professor, as a "leading critic of the tamoxifen trial." A blond movie actress beams at an even blonder toddler on an eye-level rack above a supermarket checkout counter.
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From page 4... ...
A White House announcement that the First Lady faced breast cancer surgery created a national sensation, linking the President's family to the then-unprintable words "breast" and "cancer." A new generation of women began to develop a new sense of themselves as consumers of health care services. And the unprecedented official candor about Betty Ford's and, soon afterward, Second Lady Happy Rockefeller's, mastectomies made the subject instantly respectable, sent millions of women to seek mammograms, and sparked reformers to begin questioning the disfiguring orthodoxy of total breast removal.
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From page 5... ...
Issues like these -- real, serious questions with real, serious, though not necessarily knowable, consequences -- face more and more people in our age of informed consent and increasingly impersonal care. Where once those without medical training left such matters in the hands of a trusted adviser who knew us personally and took a paternalistic interest in our welfare, today, professionals increasingly expect lay people, frequently under extreme emotional stress, to quickly learn enough gynecology or oncology or cardiology to participate in the deliberations and make the final choices among available options.
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From page 6... ...
No corresponding specialty of "andrology" studies the distinctive reproductive features of men. Male reproduction falls instead under urology, literally, "the science of urine," which, according to a leading medical dictionary, encompasses "the study, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the genitourinary tract, especially the urinary tract in both sexes and the genital organs in the male."1 Male genitalia, in other words, form a subdivision of a larger, more general, bodily system, while female reproductive organs occupy a special realm, distinct from the body at large, and one that also just happens to define their owner's essential nature.
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From page 7... ...
The Institute of Medicine brings to this effort two special resources, the breadth of its exposure to health issues and the depth of its expertise. Throughout its history, IOM has assembled committees of recognized experts to study major health issues and has organized meetings to present the latest and most authoritative views in fast-moving research fields.
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From page 8... ...
Or, as a Food and Nutrition Board conference speaker, Susan Scrimshaw, Ph.D., professor and associate dean at the UCLA School of Public Health,* put it most succinctly, the question comes down to "Why women?
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From page 9... ...
Many cultures erect specific obstacles that prevent females from eating adequately, barriers not equally applicable to males. In developing countries, most women do heavy labor and endure repeated, closely spaced pregnancies but have less chance than men and children to eat what they need.
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From page 10... ...
[the] articulation of a ‘life-cycle' approach to thinking about female health was novel and innovative," observes a ground-breaking report of IOM's Committee to Study Female Morbidity and Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa.2 This perspective assumes the need to articulate the major causes of health status not solely in women of reproductive age, but in "an individual's entire life experience from birth to death, whether or not that includes reproduction."3 Women's life experiences and social roles differ from men's in ways that affect physical and mental health.
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From page 11... ...
NOTES 1. Stedman's Medical Dictionary, 25th ed., s.v.
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