Lingual Tremors

Better Than Nothing? Think "Sexual Rosary..."

Holy sexual rosary!  Okay, here's cultural complexity at its best.   What do you do if you can't take birth control pills, have religious objections to medical birth control, or don't have access to advanced birth control like pills or shots, or even condoms?  UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is supporting a program in West Africa that distributes "Cycle Beads," a visual way to keep track of fertile days in the menstrual cycle.

The deluxe beads come in aqua, mauve and copper.  The regular ones are brown and white.  You count the beads to keep track of your cycle.  Of course you recognize this as the rhythm method (and feminists everywhere scream danger! danger!).  However, it's been updated by researchers at Georgetown University's Institute for Reproductive Health.  (I will remind you that Georgetown is a Catholic, Jesuit institution, so their institute for reproductive health focuses on research that supports Catholic doctrine).

The article from UNFPA describes the program in Senegal and points to some of the advantages and disadvantages in using cycle beads (for example, a husband's willingness to cooperate).

Now, here's the thing:  on the one hand, I'd argue for full access to a range of birth control and family planning choices.   On the other hand, when contraception choices are limited, perhaps cycle beads are better than nothing.  In fact, I think they are better than nothing.  UNFPA is clearly invested in family planning and helping women to make choices about a healthy family size and about their own lives and energy as mothers.  So, even if a woman becomes pregnant while using the cycle beads, she is already more aware of the concept of family planning, which could then lead to social and political reform for greater choices.

However, the idea of cycle beads is also controversial and a stop gap measure, rather than a true move towards sexual equality.  And, of course, it doesn't sufficiently address the rampant HIV infection rates in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Senegal, where the article is focused, is a Muslim country with a low rate of HIV infection.  Senegal is a very interesting study in a social, cultural, political, and religious response to HIV and AIDS.  Muslim and Christian leaders have been incredibly proactive in spreading accurate information about HIV/AIDS prevention.  The government has worked hard to raise awareness, to monitor official prostitutes, and to provide medication and treatment to those who have HIV.  Youth peer educators walk the streets handing out information and condoms.  It's really quite a picture of progress.  However, that's not necessarily a full picture.  In 2006, in Dakar, rates of HIV infection among sex workers were at almost 21% and in Ziguinchor at almost 30%.  One needs only to look at the history of the spread of HIV infection to know that HIV will travel from the sex workers to the husbands to the wives... 

And, since the cycle beads depend on a husband's cooperation anyway, then perhaps condoms would be the best choice, especially given the fact that the government supports the use of them and they are accessible.
 

Dr. Cuba, MD

I just discovered Current.  Apologies for the slew of posts to follow.  This is a wonderful & engaging story.  I love the first person narrative!

Roe's My Favorite Bitch. I Mean. Blog for Choice, 2008.

So, it's 35 years of Roe v. Wade today.  Here in the feminist blogosphere, we're all thinking about what voting pro-choice means.

And, let's face it.  Nothing brings out the feminist manifesta in me than Blog for Choice Day.  Nothing gets my cervix in a knot more than waking up to NPR's "homage" to Roe (i.e. the latest set of attacks against Roe).  So, grab a cuppa joe and settle in for a little classic LX ranting (yes, mom, this is a rated "R" post...).  'Cause hey:  if I can't say it here, where can I say it?

So, all day today, I've been lightly dreading this post.  Regular readers here at Chez Lingual know that I am, without question, a feminist, pro-choice blogger.  (Newbie visitors!  Welcome!  Regarding the previous sentence:  please see the categories of "Radical Uterus" and "Stepford Wife in Training" to your left for further evidence...)  But, how many more ways can I say it?  Oh, sure, I can lean lightly over to the bookshelf of feminist wisdom and quote everyone from Margaret Sanger to Kate Michelman, but at the end of the day:  who is really listening?  Do you really want me to quote Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale AGAIN?  AGAIN?  AGAIN?

And see, on the very surface of things, this is where I find Barack Obama attractive.  Aren't you sick of the continual clash of the left and the right?  Aren't you sick of FOX News vs. NPR vs. The New York Times vs. The National Review vs. Pacifica vs. NBC?  Wouldn't it be great if we could all get along?  Wouldn't it be great if Obama and McCain brought beer?  A really great beer with bottled beer taste in a can?  (Oh sorry--that's another post...)

But here's the thing:  abortion isn't like an eco-friendly Hummer (okay--we all know that an eco-friendly Hummer isn't really eco-friendly, but you get the point). 

Let me say that again.  Abortion isn't an eco-friendly Hummer. 

There's no real place to meet in the middle.  Taxes?  Maybe.  War?  Possibly.  Health care?  The Economy?  Sure!  We agree that those are serious, vote-worthy issues, even though we don't agree how to address the.  But abortion?  The two sides of the abortion wars are perpetually divided, a political schism the size of the San Andreas fault running through the very foundation of this country.  We can't just all get along.   

Over at Salon.com, Rebecca Traister writes in the introduction to her interviews with feminists on the importance of Roe:

I wish it were possible to raise a glass, give a birthday toast, and claim that Roe didn't look a day over 29, but alas, this is a bittersweet bash. A mere three and half decades after her birth, Roe shows her age: She's been weakened, knocked around, had big bites taken out of her.

Now, I take umbrage at the fact that 35 is old.  Those of us in our 30s know that we're just hitting our stride...  But here's the thing:  America is a cruel and perverted daddy ready to encourage us to show a little skin and then to beat us for having sex.  America is peering through the keyhole of our bedroom, enjoying what he sees, and getting ready to lecture us about it later.

America likes its little girls full of sexual promise.  Think about Jonbenet Ramsey's already sexual pout, hands on hips, full of intent.  Want a poster child for what's wrong with women's roles in the United States?  Look at the Britney Spears debacle of motherhood.  When she was in her naughty school girl uniform, showing just enough skin America drooled in front of the television.  While she was slithering around 3/4 naked on stage with a snake, America licked the screen.  When she graduated to leather, America jacked off in the corner.  And now that she's a mother?  An unfit mother?  She's bitch-slapped with every insult possible.

The fight over choice amounts to this:  America wants you to have sex.  No lap dances.  No titty fucks.  America wants you to have good, old fashioned, full penetration sex.  Lots of it.  And then America wants you to pay for it.  Literally.

It's all well and good that the conservative movement wants to talk about "pro-life" and saving babies.  But at the end of the day, is any compassionate conservatism actually motivated by some real sense of biblical justice?  I ask this, with all sincerity, who would Jesus bomb? 

So, here's my point:  sure, we can talk about patriarchy.  We can talk about women's rights over their own bodies.  We can talk about the woman's body as a public possession.  We can talk about when life begins.  We can talk politics.  We can talk religion.  We can talk philosophy.  Those are all valid points.  Those are all important points.  But, perhaps, we also need to talk about money.  Because really, aren't conservative arguments in the U.S. always about money?  Here's a tagline for you:  Ain't nobody nowhere making Enron-style money off of an abortion clinic.  Ain't no off shore bank accounts accruing "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" kinds of cash from the economics of abortions.

Here's the question:  why vote pro-choice?  For the same reasons that you vote for things like national health care plans or to end the war or to really fund education.  Because no one is going to give you those things.  We live in a capitalist country run by money.  And nothing talks money like a beautiful, bouncing baby.  MSNBC offers helpful tips on "Raising Your Quarter-Million Dollar Baby."  Here's a chilling quote:

For 2004, the newest data available, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that families making $70,200 a year or more will spend a whopping $269,520 to raise a child from birth through age 17. Higher-income families in urban areas in the West spend the most, $284,460.

Though not as steep, the figures for lower-income families are just as unsettling: $184,320 for families earning $41,700 to $70,200 and $134,370 for families making less than that. That breaks down to nearly $15,000 a year from birth to age 2 for families in the $65,800 -plus income bracket. As your child ages, he or she gets even more expensive, topping out at $15,810 from ages 15 to 17. This is no back-of-the-envelope guesstimate. The survey involves visits to, and interviews with, about 5,000 households, four times a year.

That's for 1 kid, to age 18.  Read:  no college.  It's in the conservative best interest to have middle-class families making as many babies as possible.  Think:  bigger houses, more bedrooms!  Health care premiums!  Diapers!  Formula!  Day Care!  Day Care!  Day Care!  Private School Vouchers!  And don't forget about the strollers!  (You will die if you don't buy the best buggy in town...).  Don't even get me started on student loans.  I could go on and on and on...

Now, I'm not actually saying you shouldn't have kids.  If you want kids, go for it.  Do it.  Be a good parent.  Be good parents.  Be intentional.  Be loving.  But, here's the thing:  your government wants you to have a kid only because it's good for the economy.  If we lived under a government that really cared about kids, then kids would have universal health care.  Kids would have great schools.  Parents would have good day care programs or wouldn't have to have two parents working just to scrape by.  Children's services would be functional and well-funded.  Parents would be supported. 

But here's my point:  we don't live in that world.  And in the same way that you can't really have an eco-friendly Hummer, you can't have a world where kids don't have health care, but you have to have a kid. 

When you vote, the issues are all connected.  And, at the end of the day?  It's the poor and the middle class, brandishing their swords against the rich.  We may talk a good game of democracy and hope and change.  But, no one is going to change the world for you.  You're going to have to get up, go to the voting booth, and do it with everyone else who believes what you believe. 

You're going to have to stand and fight because at the end of the day, it's not in America's best interest to let you make your own decisions.  It's much better to dupe you into thinking that, in post 9/11 Bush eloquence, that the single best thing you can do after a horrific terrorist attack literally stops the nation, you should shop.  Or have a baby.  Whatever.  Just keep that money flowing.

Why am I voting pro-choice?  Because I believe that America needs sexual rehab.  America needs a reality check.  I have to fight to make America about more than money.  I want to get America off the couch and into the soup kitchen.  I want to get America into a philosophy course.  An ethics course.  I want America to stop bombing things.  I want a truly changed America.  And for me, that's an America where every kid is a wanted kid.  That's an America where parents want to be parents.  I want an America that really cares about its kids.

You remember your high school self.  You might have had good SAT scores.  Maybe you were a National Merit Scholar.  Maybe you were average.  Maybe you were a band geek.  Maybe you were a prom queen. Maybe you dated the prom queen.  Whatever.  The point is:  we all had our mirror-obsessive moments of "am I cute enough?"  "Will they like me?"  But, that's the stuff of childhood.

The great thing about 30 is that we've all learned a lot.  Men, women.  We're smarter in our 30s than we were in our 20s, in our teens.

So, hey.  Let's rewrite Roe.  Let's make her sassy, with a touch of gray in her hair.  Let's make her old enough to say what's really on her mind.  Let's make Roe the proud mother of 2.  Let's make Roe bold and strong.  Let's make her a leader.  Let's make her a bitch.  Let's help Roe with a new motto:  "Let's fuck shit up."  Let's make Roe a Margaret Thatcher "winner takes all" kind of woman.  Let's take Roe all the way, baby.  Let's make Roe a grandma and great-grandma and great-great-grandma who loves to wear purple and escort women into clinics.  Let's vote Roe president.

Happy birthday Roe.  You're my favorite bitch in town.

Kisses and hugs,

Lingual X

Read on!

New Faces:

• The Curvature
• Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome
• Canned Peaches
• Kittywampus
• Inspired Faith, Effective Action
• Stinky Lulu

The Feminist Faithful:

• Angry Black Bitch
• Feminist Law Profs

Aw, heck.  Just go read them all for yourself!  The WHOLE List of 2008 Blog for Choice bloggers...

And, check out Salon.com's special feature on 35 years...

And, of course, a trip down memory lane:
My 2006 Blog for Choice Post
My 2007 Blog for Choice Post

Meh. Late Again. NYC & Abstinence: Richard Daines is AWESOME!

Glad to live in a state that actually thinks about what accepting money from the feds means.  Via a little red hen:

"New York is rejecting millions of dollars for federal grants for abstinence-only sex education, the state health commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, announced..." New York Times, September 21, 2007.

Daines called it a "failed...policy...based on ideology rather than on sound scientific-based evidence..." 

Of course this is going to put a strain on programs that have accepted that money in the past.  However, excising abstinence only from our sexual education training can only help.  Hurray!  Hurray!  Hurray! 

Hidden AIDS Crisis: Rural America and HIV

I was a little taken aback by this one.  Just when you think we've come a long way comes this latest AIDSphobic incident.  I first saw this at Pandagon.  Here's the original news item at NBC 15:

A couple who checked into a recreational vehicle park with their 2-year-old foster son were told the boy couldn't use the showers, pool or other common areas because he has the HIV virus.

The couple said that in the future, they will not discuss their foster son's condition to avoid this kind of prejudice.  The owner of the RV park was concerned that the child might spread the disease by using the common areas or the pool.  In rural Alabama, it seems, there's still a lot of work to be done in HIV/AIDS education. 

"Most people know you can swim in the same pool or use the same bathroom without the danger of contracting the virus. Definitely, we still need education efforts out there, especially in rural areas," said David Little, executive director of Mobile-based South Alabama CARES, an AIDS education and outreach organization that serves 12 counties in south Alabama.

There are more than 8,252 AIDS cases in Alabama (those are AIDS cases, not HIV cases based on the 2005 CDC surveillance report).  Clearly HIV/AIDS is an issue in Alabama, but education efforts need to go a lot further.  We hear a lot about HIV/AIDS in urban areas;  the subways and billboards often carry educational messages about HIV/AIDS.  In rural areas, however, where car culture dominates, I'm not sure where people would get this education.  There may be some PSAs on the television or radio, but they don't dominate in the same way visual rhetoric speaks to urban culture.  Coupled with increasingly conservative abstinence-only sexual education programs and science curriculum dominated by creationist rhetoric, it seems like rural areas, particularly in the South, have some amazing challenges ahead because medically accurate information is hard to sell. 

Kathy Hiers, CEO of AIDS Alabama says:

"Unfortunately the South has the top ten cities for STDs in the country, it's been that way for as long as I can remember. And by the same token the South is absolutely exploding with HIV disease. We are seeing the disease move along socio-economic lines into poor communities, rural communities, women and certainly minorities and young people.

Hiers is the CEO of AIDS Alabama. AIDS workers have known for years the virus was moving to rural areas. To try to stem the tide of infection Alabama launched a rural outreach program called the Alabama Rural AIDS Project. Hiers says launching the project was no easy thing.

Read the entire 2006 article on AIDS in Alabama.  It has some very interesting thoughts about HIV/AIDS and rural America.

Nailing Today's 95 Theses to the Hospital Door: Moore's Sicko!

Faithful readers of Lingual Tremors know that I was recently in PA visiting the parental units over the Fourth of July.  In deciding our plans for the 4th, my mom and I were debating patriotism.  In our conversation, she was discussing how she is proud of her American heritage and roots, but disgusted by the current government;  I was arguing that nationality by birth isn't enough for me.  And so she asked the question I always dread when we have this conversation:  "Where would you rather live?"  After seeing Sicko today, my answer is:  "France, the U.K. or Canada." 

I know I'm over a week late on this review--but Sicko wasn't playing in our part of Pennsylvania.  Much to my surprise upon returning to New York City, it isn't playing in many theaters here either.  I live in New York freakin' city, people!  How is it that Sicko is only playing in a handful of theaters?  How is it that only a week after its release, we saw the film in a theater not even 1/4 filled?

I think this has to do with American attitudes towards health care:  we all know the system is broken, but no one can see a clear way towards fixing it.  Current pinata-boy for the Democrats, Joe Biden, said in a town hall-style presentation in Iowa this weekend that you can't move the system from "this" to "this"  (Absent visual:  moving his fingers from the right to the left) immediately.  And so the "answer" is an apathetic, depressive, do nothing.  (Or, if you're a Democratic candidate, unveil a plan that isn't entirely clear or, if you're a Republican candidate, practice the phrase "health care?  What's the problem?").  So, Sicko isn't on top of people's agenda in quite the same way that Fahrenheit 9/11 was.  What a shame, because Sicko is a better film:  it's better researched, better argued, and better filmed.  All of the reliable Mooreisms are there--his wry and sardonic narrative, his outrageous stunts (taking 9/11 workers to Cuba for health care?), his real connection to the people he interviews, and his excellent researching of the stories we too often don't hear--but this film goes even farther by really delving into the problem.

In short, Moore has hit it on the head again.  Do whatever you need to do to see this film.  Convince others to see this film.  Early bad reviews have centered on Moore's one-sided presentation of HMOs and the for-profit insurance industry.  Early good reviews have focused on Moore's targeted critique of the problems in American health care.

Moore's film is, indeed, entirely one-sided.  In freshman composition, we call that an argument-driven thesis.  Moore's point?  The U.S. needs universal health care because the U.S. has become a country driven by greed where working hard and believing in the American dream is not enough to get by (my own argument-driven thesis would question whether this was ever truly the case).  Moore's point?  Health care is a right, not a privilege and other countries do it better;  so, why not do it better?

Moore debunks the most common myths about socialized or national health care by visiting France, the U.K. and Canada to see the facilities and interview patients and doctors.  Among the small audience we saw Sicko with, the cheers and groans were evident as Moore moved through what seemed like the luxuries of the health care systems in those countries.  Nannies that do laundry (state funded in France?), birthing clinics that are the size of my apartment in New York (England), inhalers that cost .5 cents (Cuba)...  [Full disclosure:  fully insured in the U.S., I am currently waiting over a month to see a breast surgeon for a biopsy... so I'm not particularly interested in critiques of the Canadian or British system where people wait (gasp!) over a month to see a specialist.]. 

Moore also includes his signature vignettes.  As always, I love how he gets people to open up to him about difficult, embarrassing, and heart-breaking stuff.  However, in Sicko, in some ways, this was both the most interesting and most disappointing part of the film.  Moore doesn't focus on Americans without health care;  he focuses on those with health care that is sub-standard because the insurance industry is profit-driven.  The stories are heart-breaking and awful.  Each one is more horrific than the next.  The one that was most affective to me:  hospitals dumping patients without insurance in front of a free clinic in L.A. 

Part of Moore's iconic approach to film-making relies on making abstract ideas like "health care" real.  I'm sure that I wasn't alone in wanting to send money to the people Moore highlighted in his film.  But, just like giving money to the homeless on the NYC subway won't end homelessness or hunger, giving money to people facing medical debt won't solve the medical crisis in this country.  Moreover, these stories don't address the true iniquities in the U.S. system.  How typical are they of medical-insurance nightmares faced in the U.S.?  What about those without any health care?  In some ways, I think Moore's comparison on national health care systems versus private industry insurance would have been even more effective if it had focused on how those without health care would receive health care in other countries.  Moreover, I think it would have made a better argument to show how "typical" the stories he presented were.  It's too easy for Moore-critics to say that the stories he presented were "atypical."  So, his argument could have been strengthened by showing how typical these stories are.

Moore also begins his campaign for the 2008 Presidential election.  Hillary Clinton takes it on the chin for taking money from the health care industry.  Moore does an excellent job of identifying the ways in which governmental intervention in health care has been compromised.  See a complete list of candidates and contributions from the health care industry/Big Pharma here.

Another great part of the film is his interview with Tony Benn, a former member of Britain's Parliament.  Benn provides insight after insight about both the kind of responsibility the government should have to its people--"if we have the money to kill, we've got the money to help people"--and his ideas about how democracy should work.  Benn believes that in the U.K. (and in Europe), "the politicians are afraid of the people" and so the people get what they want.  He suggests that the dismantling of the National Health System in the U.K. would cause a revolution.

Which brings me back to the point I began with.  Sicko should be enough to start a revolution in the U.S.  People should be outraged;  this isn't about political affiliation:  this isn't about political rhetoric;  this is about human lives.  This is about social justice.  This is about living in a country that truly believes all of its citizens are equal and showing that by the way it treats its people.  Don't we all have the right to expect good health care?  Why should insurance companies profit from your illness or death?  Where do you want to live?  What dream do you want to fight for?  A system where people are treated equally or a system where the least and last are dumped on a dirty L.A. street in hospital gowns without a hope in the world? 

As always, Moore goes beyond the critique.  Here's his plan for fixing health care in the U.S.:

I couldn't agree more.  Let's start a revolution.

Read On:

• Moore's site
• Margaret's Wanderings
• Thomas Paine's Corner
• Fire Dog Lake
• The Mahablog
• The Health Care Blog
• Green LA Girl
• Philadelphia Health Care Blog
• New York Times review
• News Item on Lauren Turner, Google employee & capitalist jerk

Action Steps:

• Sign the petition for Congress to pass H.R. 676
• Physicians for National Health Care

Idiot of the Week: Dr. Gary Merrill

Ah yes, it's time for that Lingual Tremors' favorite:  Idiot of the Week. Today, I offer you Dr. Gary Merrill, prejudicial physician.

Look.  Here's what I don't need:  my doctor as judge.  And, it's not what you think (it's non-abortion medical post!).  In the latest case of medical ideology:  your doctor as judge and priest, a "Christian" pediatrician in Bakersfield, California, refused to treat a toddler with an ear infection because her mother had tattoos.  Did you get that?  If you have a tattoo, you don't get medical treatment.  Here's a sound byte from KGET, a local television station:

The doctor said he is just following his beliefs, creating a Christian atmosphere for his patients.

Tasha Childress said it’s discrimination.

She said Dr. Gary Merrill wouldn’t treat her daughter for an ear infection because Tasha, the mother, has tattoos.

The writing is on the wall—literally: “This is a private office. Appearance and behavior standards apply.”

For Dr. Gary Merrill of Christian Medical Services, that means no tattoos, body piercings, and a host of other requirements—all standards Merrill has set based upon his Christian faith.

And the AMA is backing him up.  Doctors, they say, have the right to refuse service to anyone.  Smack of discrimination anyone?  Of course, I don't really want to be treated by a doctor who has some sort of prejudice against me. (And the very title "Christian Medical Services" creeps me out, even though I am a practicing Christian.  In this case, "Christian" means creepy Promise-keeper religious style oppression using bad Biblical interpretation to beat "others" into submission.)

However, I think this is an interesting brewing conflict in American culture.  Academia, for example, is constantly getting attacked for "ideology" in the classroom.  What if a left-wing doctor refused to treat David Horowitz because the physician disagreed with Horowitz's politics?  I would argue, with all due deference to my profession, that medical attention is a little more important than your average Spanish or History class.  So, if faculty have to curb their bias in the classroom, why do doctors get to practice blatant discrimination?

For the record:  there is no legitimate Biblical argument for refusing to treat someone with tattoos.  Oh, only Merrill wasn't asked to treat the mother with tattoos.  It was the BABY, who DIDN'T HAVE ANY tattoos.  Okay, I'm not even going there except to say, this happened in the state that wants to bring heightened and sensitive awareness to child-rearing.  This state has brought you a proposed "anti-spanking" law.  So, you can't spank your kid because that's child abuse.  But denying a baby medical care?  Well, that's just physician's "right of conscience." 

Novartis Targets Indian Patent Law

Doctors Without Borders is reporting that pharmaceutical giant Novartis is taking the Indian government to court over the World Trade Organization's rules about patents.  This could seriously endanger cheaper medicines that developing countries rely on:

India is a major source of affordable medicines, such as antiretrovirals to treat HIV/AIDS. Until 2005, the country did not grant patents on medicines, allowing Indian companies to freely produce inexpensive generic versions of medicines patented in other countries. These were used both domestically and in other developing countries. Over half the medicines currently used for AIDS treatment in developing countries come from India and such medicines are used to treat over 80 percent of the 80,000 people living with HIV/AIDS who are enrolled in Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières projects.

Read more at MSF.

Q & A on patent law in India.

Sign the petition.

Gardasil: The New Oreo

So.  2 blogs are a little tough to manage.  But I shall persevere!  Over at LX Project 365, I'm really enjoying exploring a different medium.  During the academic year, as I go to and from school, I have largely the same daily routine and follow the same route (isn't this true for all of us?).  So, I'm really finding myself challenged, in a good way, to find something to snap a picture of.  It reminds me a little bit of Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things.  A shower curtain shot?  Who knew?

But now, what you really came for:  grab a cuppa and settle in for a little politics, Lingual style.  So, them Texans are up to no good again, eh?  (With all due apologies to my darling best friend...)

Merck is selling Gardasil like it's the new Oreo.  Every time you turn on prime time television (or daytime television, for that matter), you're bombarded by ads for Gardasil.  And, in theory Gardasil is a good thing:  cervical cancer is a nasty, horrible form of cancer that really makes women suffer.  All cancers raise the collective alarms.  I think cancer is the secret fear of many in our society.  So, a vaccine for cancer seems like a good idea.  I was an early recipient of the Hepatitis B vaccine and I'm glad for it;  coming of age sexually during the HIV/AIDS boom, anything that made sex just a little less scary was a good thing.

Now, there have already been a lot of great pieces on Gardasil.  I'll direct you to 10 Things You Might Not Know About Gardasil.  It's well written and has some good research. 

What I'd like to focus on is Texas' inconsistent policy.  First, McGraw Hill created a special textbook JUST FOR TEXAS.  (You can read more about that here.)  The Texas "health" textbook  redefined marriage as only between a man and a woman;  it also takes an abstinence only position on sex. So, here's the thing:  if their schools emphasize heteronormative sexual relations, within the confines of marraige only, then why do 11 year olds need to be vaccinated against HPV?  In a state that privileges, in its educational policies and in its censorship of educational materials, the principals of abstinence only education until marraige, how are 11 year old girls going to get a sexually transmitted cancer?  In the era of the pre-pregnant body, the physical body is capable of having sex, but as a society, we won't offer any information about sex until it's too late.  The philosophy driving this seems to be:  let's close our eyes and pretend that girls don't have sex but vaccinate them just in case they do.  The pre-pregnant body is now being chased at all times by the spector of the almost-baby.  What's next?  Mandatory folic acid for all women from ages 10 and up?

The fact of the matter is:  if I had an 11 year old, I would have her vaccinated, despite some of the excellent questions raised by researchers, writers, and bloggers around the country.  I'd do it because preventing cancer seems like a good thing.  But, that decision would also be complimented by age-appropriate information about sex and sexuality.  It would be part of a larger family discussion about sex.  And that would be my decision to make as a parent. 

Instead, Texas is barreling forward with this policy--making it tough for parents to easily opt out--with what motivation?  The glaring contradiction makes me wonder:  from the state that inspired No Child Left Behind (and McGraw Hill's huge profit from increased standardized testing), comes Merck's estimated cash cow ($70 million in sales and rising--Vioxx anyone?).  So, is it about our girls' health or the bottom line?   This vaccine is terribly expensive at $360.00.  Add to the concerns about parental rights the obvious issues of class--what about low income families without medical insurance?  How are they going to pay for this?

Gardasil vaccinations should not be mandatory, especially not from a state that has proven that it's less than progressive about reproductive health choices.  Instead, there should be a state-sponsored educational campaign aimed at informing parents about the benefits and risks of vaccination.  And parents should get to choose to opt in.   

What's Cervical Cancer? from the American Cancer Society
About HPV Vaccines from the National Cancer Institute
Texas Abstinence Only Textbooks
Merck's Profits

Follow Up on Mandatory HIV/AIDS Testing

I've gotten some flack about my previous posting on HIV/AIDS.  So, I thought I'd take a moment to clarify it just a little.  I am not, in principle, opposed to mandatory HIV/AIDS testing.  I think destigmatizing HIV/AIDS by making it a regular part of one's medical care has distinct advantages.  It will also go a long way towards assisting people who do not know that they are positive, ensuring that they have early access to life-saving drugs.  All of this is a given.  And, as an AIDS activist, all of these are advantages I applaud. 

What gives me pause, however, is what I read as the increasing surveillance and restrictions on sexuality in the United States.  We've left a very brief window of time where sexuality was unfettered and we seem to be returning to a period of very heteronormative, "sex for procreation" kinds of rhetoric.

If the current mandatory HIV/AIDS testing policy existed in conjunction with a liberated HIV/AIDS policy that included things like:  access to anonymous testing, condoms in the schools, and safe sex education programs that worked, I would see this latest move as part of a comprehensive & effective HIV/AIDS policy.  But our current HIV/AIDS policy doesn't work--on too many levels to ennumerate here.

Instead, it seems like we're moving backwards to a period of regressive social policy around sexuality.  Anyone having anything other than heterosexual sex for the purposes of procreation is suspect. This is seen in the battles over funding for progressive HIV/AIDS programs, for international programs wanting U.S. funding for family planning, and the battle lines over abortion.  All of this echoes the very real controversies over the bathhouse closures in New York City and San Francisco in the 1980s--on the one hand a necessary public health move and on the other hand a very totalitarian approach to policing sex. 

If you're interested in issues like this, exploring the philosophical framework against which one might read current social policy, a good place to start is Simon Watney's Policing Desire or Denis Altman's Global Sex.

Mandatory HIV/AIDS Testing

On Thursday, the CDC released new guidelines that say that HIV/AIDS tests should be as regular as cholesterol tests for people between 13 and 64 (this presupposes that all adolescents are sexually active and that after 64, you're not in danger;  both dangerous presuppositions).

As HIV/AIDS rates begin their perilous re-rise in the U.S., many people are living with HIV and they don't even know it.  Against this backdrop, the CDC is recommending mandatory HIV testing to get an accurate accounting of HIV in the United States and to begin treatment for those who don't know that they are positive.

On the one hand, this recommendation acknowledges the extent of the problem in the U.S.  On the other hand, however, yet again, HIV/AIDS policy in the United States doesn't exist in a vacuum.  When you put the new guidelines up against other recent "health" guidelines, here's what you get:

• You must get an HIV/AIDS test
• Sex ed programs must teach abstinence-only curriculum
• You can't have access to EC
• You have increasingly limited access to abortion
• You may or may not be able to have your birth control pills filled
• If you're on public assistance, you will be encouraged to get married
• If you are between the ages of 13 and 60 (give or take), you are "pre-pregnant"
• Idiots like Jerry Thacker and Tom Coburn are "leading" the fight against HIV/AIDS on PACHA (President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS)--Coburn resigned in 2004, but his time on PACHA did serious damage to HIV/AIDS efforts nationally and internationally; Thacker didn't end up on PACHA after the flack over his appointment.  Thank God for small favors.
  

Refugee NYC: Heroes of the Week

MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières), or Doctors Without Borders, set up a refugee camp in New York City this weekend to model camp conditions.  It was a fantastic exhibit!  They took over a corner of Central Park with tents, potable water, and model clinics to show what their work is like abroad.

To give you a sense of their "reality medicine," they had visitors carry 5 gallon jugs of clean water.  (They were HEAVY).  In the best conditions, every person in the camp receives 5 gallons of water a day (per person).  This is for drinking, cooking, bathing, etc.  In comparison, the average American consumption of water is 100 gallons per day (or 20 of those jugs...).

Doctors & nurses who have served with MSF gave guided tours of the camp (mine lasted over 1 1/2 hours), showing refugee conditions, and explaining the amazing work MSF does.  In the tour, they really explained both the political and medical conditions they work under.  My tour guides worked in the Sudan and Darfur.  The extremes of the refugee camps were hard to recreate on a balmy Sunday afternoon in New York.  Nevertheless, our guides carefully explained MSF's efforts at sanitation, nutrition, and medicine.

This was the entryway to the exhibit.  You waited in line, in front of a gate, to enter the camp.

Throughout the camp, "no arms" signs like these were ubiquitous.

This is an example of a Sudanese shelter, made from plastic tarp.

Although MSF works primarily with medicine, they also have some nutritional programs for the malnourished.

This is a picture of the mobile lab where they triage patients.  In addition, they also run vaccination clinics, cholera clinics, and malnutrition clinics.  Quite literally, MSF goes where few others will. I've written about their work before because I admire their work greatly and I think their public outreach efforts are exceptional. 

More pictures on my flickr account (click on the flickr badge in the left hand column).

Action Steps:

Go to the display--
In New York
Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Wednesday, September 20 - Sunday, September 24
9:30 am to 6:30 pm daily

The Meadow, Piedmont Park, Atlanta
Wednesday, September 27 - Sunday, October 1
9:30 am to 6:30 pm daily

Centennial Park, Nashville
Wednesday, October 4 - Sunday, October 8
9:30 am to 6:30 pm daily

Can't visit one of those locations?

Visit MSF on the web.  Donate.  Lots.  They are funded primarily by private donors.  They do NOT accept money from the U.S. Government, in part so that they can function neutrally and without limitations on their services.  (They do accept money from the EU).

Medical Ethics 101: No Torture

NPR had a fantastic interview this morning with Stephen Miles, a medical ethicist.  He argues that the medical community in Iraq had a responsibility to report the abuses in the prison.  He says:

"Doctors and nurses are frontline human rights monitors," Miles says. "They are present in prisons that the Red Cross never gets to and they are there when other human rights monitors are not. And even if they don't see the abuses themselves, they see the signs of the abuses."

So why didn't the medical system blow the whistle at Abu Ghraib?

"The physicians' obligation in prison camps is to the health of the prisoners," Miles says. "Prisons are totally different from battlefields. These people are outside of combat. They are disarmed and captive, and in those circumstances, the medical system's first obligation is to the health of the captives."

Read his new book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror

Still interested?  On a related topic (medical ethics and nationalism, but not about the United States), I recommend Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, a fantastic on-line exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Motherhood: An Instrument of the State?

Have a baby.  Get a medal.  Sometimes nationalism is that easy.  8 kids= a gold medal, 5-7 kids= silver, 4 kids=bronze

It's a quantifiable patriotism and a clear message:  breed for the state.

(Photo via No Beliefs)

I went to D.C. this week to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  I've been there before and I highly recommend it to one and all.  It's an amazing meditation on the Holocaust and ways that Hitler irrevocably altered our understanding of the world.  Since I'd seen the permanent collection before, I had a chance to spend time in the Deadly Medicine exhibit. 

Sometimes, in depth exhibits like this allow me to put a variety of theoretical and practical politics into play because they allow me to revisit a "known" topic, for example eugenics, in a different way and with a specific focus  (the older I get, the more I love metonym--scrutinizing the part to better understand the whole) . 

While the Deadly Medicine focused on eugenics, and in part on the T-4 program to euthanize the mentally retarded and physically handicapped, there was a tiny, but chilling part of the exhibit that focused on German women as mothers.  Since this blog often comments on the relationship between womanhood and state, I found the exhibit fascinating in light of my previous post, "Forever Vessel." 

While the comparison necessarily comes up short at a certain point, the construction of German women as mothers who literally embody the state had some chilling lessons for women living in the United States today.

Women's Health: Lies and Drawing the Line

There is nothing more frightening than illness.  I think that many of us live on the edge of worry about interacting with the medical system during an extended illness.  But this comes from the individual's confrontation of mortality.  More recently, I think, women have begun to fear the medical system because of its inconsistent ability to provide reliable and truthful information.  The era of liberated women's health care was brief--and today, we find ourselves ensconced deeply in Foucault's idea of the hospital as an institution of power.  The medical establishment is an extension of the state.

Bitch, Ph.D. pointed me to Brian Alexander's "The New Lies About Women's Health."  As a self-avowed feminist, I wouldn't normally be caught dead reading Glamour.  But Alexander's article is a fantastic discussion of the current crisis in women's health care as the Bush administration (although, as my friend frequently reminds me, it's important to remember that the "abstinence only" educational programs began with Clinton) seeks to narrow definitions and treatments available to women.  You should read Alexander's entire article, but here are some chilling excerpts:

• ...this decidedly mainstream doctor and administrator says, "I no longer trust FDA decisions or materials generated [by the government]. Ten years ago, I would not have had to scrutinize government information. Now I don't feel comfortable giving it to my patients."
• "People believe that religiously based social conservatives have direct lines to the powers that be within the U.S. government, the administration, Congress, and are influencing public-health policy, practice and research in ways that are unprecedented and very dangerous," says Judith Auerbach, Ph.D., a former NIH official who is now a vice president at the nonprofit American Foundation for AIDS Research.
• ...several states, including Louisiana, Wisconsin, Virginia and North Carolina, have online abstinence programs that link to a site called abstinencedu.com, which warns that HIV might be able to penetrate a latex condom (patently false), that "condoms offer no protection against HPV infection" (not true) and that "there is no scientific evidence that condoms reduce the risk of becoming infected with the other 23 major STDs" (also false).
• Outside of the halls of science, who are the real victims of this political maneuvering? "The American public, particularly American women," says Trussell. "Who's hurt when you can't get EC over the counter? When there is a suggestion that abortion causes breast cancer—something that is entirely made up? When it's suggested that condoms are not effective against STDs, when in reality they are effective against HIV and even HPV? Women."

So, what's a girl to do?  What's frightening about this report is that we're not just talking about abortion alone.  This is more troubling because it touches on all aspects of women's health care.

First, interview your doctor.  Have a little heart to heart.  Bring in the Glamour article.  Bring in an article on condoms and their reliability.  Test the waters.  If you don't like the answers you get, find a new physician.  If you have trouble locating a feminist or woman-friendly physician, contact groups like Planned Parenthood, NOW and the Feminist Majority Foundation for recommendations. 

Be wary of any information that seems contradictory to you.  Do your own research--the informed patient is a powerful patient.  Do not accept information or treatment that you do not agree with.  Always get a second opinion!

Also, fight back.  If you have an encounter with a doctor or health care worker that is unacceptable, report him or her to your state Department of Health, the local Department of Health (if you have one), your state Attorney General, the American Medical Association.  If you are in an area with a Planned Parenthood, contact them for information about how to make a complaint.  Create a paper trail and let others in your area know how they can create a paper trail too.  (See Tennessee Guerrilla Women for their state-related women's choice project). 

Also, consider having your health care needs met by a local Planned Parenthood.  Mad Melancholic Feminista has a great piece on her choice to return to her local Planned Parenthood to support their mission.

Good Information At:
Feminist Women's Health Center
Links (from FWHC)
Our Bodies Ourselves

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Program

Reuters had a fantastic story yesterday (via Yahoo) on a non-profit bereavement program called "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep," which provides professional photographers to families with children who are dying.  It's a really powerful and impressive program to help parents grieve. 

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep website

Subways, Buses, and Airplanes, Oh My!

Wash. Your. Hands.  Thought Mumps were a thing of the past?  Think again.

This week the CDC put out an advisory about the passengers to state health departments. "Infectious diseases can travel easily on planes and other modes of transportation," said Dr. Jane Seward, acting deputy director of the CDC's viral diseases division.

Dr. Mardge Cohen & We-ACTx: Heroes of the Week

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead

People will be judged by how they respond to the AIDS epidemic. ~Nelson Mandela

(Photo via Joshua Trevino on Flickr)

In my own work, I find it rare to be truly inspired by an individual's HIV/AIDS work.  Like many others, I am tired of HIV/AIDS.  I am tired of fighting the same battles over and over and over again. I want to be inspired, but too often, I don't see the "path" to prevention and a cure.  Instead, I see a government's uninformed approach leading us back into a crisis.   Often, I find myself working with people who are truly committed to the cause, but who are making the very best of the system that we have.  We can't walk away from the imperfections of the system because that would abandon those who need us;  at the same time, many activists, in particular, always see the limitations of the political and the medical systems.   I've written often here about my concern for the direction of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in the United States.  I believe that activists and primary health care workers and AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) across the country share my concerns as we continue to advocate for change.

About a week, ago, however, I had the opportunity to hear someone I would like to nominate as a true hero in Lingual Tremor's sporadic acknowledgment of good works:  Dr. Mardge Cohen of Stroger Hospital (Cook County) in Chicago, founder and former director of the Women and Children HIV program at Cook County Hospital (since 1988) and more recently, Medical Director of the We-ACTx program. 

Every once in a while, it's important for activists to see their work in a larger context.  And, boy, did Dr. Cohen take me by surprise with her fierce feminist approach to HIV/AIDS in Chicago and Rwanda as she discussed her personal contributions to HIV/AIDS.  Despite my own critiques of the medical establishment, I believe that we would all live in a better world if hospitals and health care clinics were dominated by people with the intelligence, grace, humility, fierceness, and humanity of doctors like Dr. Cohen.  She was, in short, a wonder to behold.

Hegemony of Health

I'm not a smoker & in fact, I'm one of the people who dreads having to run the smoker's boscage outside of my building every morning.  As I straggle into work through the artifical mist of a primeval, yet oddly urban forest, I curse my coworkers with misanthropic desires, asthmatically coughing all the way to my office.

And yet... is this going too far?  In England (via The Guardian)

Hundreds of thousands of smokers will be banned from lighting up in their own homes when nurses or other health workers visit them, under controversial new rules drawn up by the nurses' professional body.

The move dramatically widens the scope of the public clampdown on passive smoking - taking it from the workplace or the pub into the living room. It will trigger fresh debate over the nature of personal freedom versus public health.

So much for privacy and freedom...

Elegy for Tory Dent

Today, like many others in the poetry community, I received the sad news that Tory Dent died last Friday.   At 47, she ended her 17 year struggle with HIV/AIDS leaving behind her a considerable legacy of passion, poetics, elegance, and grace.   But those words are too generic to describe someone who changed her world with every word.  Tonight, I am anything but eloquent;  my profound sadness at this deep hole in the fabric of the world leaves my words--and therefore my tribute--lacking.  But I want you to know this:  Tory Dent was the kind of person we should all want to be.  Poet, activist, and brave warrior, she made language churn, agitating for the changes she sought.  Tory Dent came and found the world lacking, so she disturbed the world with her 3 collections of brilliant work.

I have rarely read or loved a writer whose pen was truly as mighty as Tory's.  Deftly, poignantly, and righteously, Dent chronicled an invisible AIDS, the experiences of women and children and those soon forgotten, even as HIV consumed her own body (In HIV, Mon Amour she writes, "the way the shipwrecked do into the ocean, the way HIV overrides my body as/if overwriting the flesh, the waterline rising above my upturned, gasping face."). 

American AIDS has drifted into the background noise of the larger--and often more palatable--pandemic of African AIDS, but Tory worked eloquently and fearlessly to keep American AIDS as ever-present as possible and to seek changes in legislation, medication, and culture.  She didn't ask for our attention;  she demanded it with a language that inspired, chronicled, philosophized, and  disrupted our expectations.   

We All Have AIDS