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L.A. Times, NYT Opinion Pieces Discuss International Women's Health Issues
The Los Angeles Times and the New York Times recently published opinion pieces examining issues related to international women"s health. Summaries appear below.~ Michelle Goldberg, Los Angeles Times: The solution to addressing issues of over-population and under-population in various parts of the world is "giving women more control over their fertility and their lives," Goldberg, author of "The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World," writes in a Times opinion piece. Goldberg says that both problems are "symptoms of countries" failures to meet women"s needs." Citing United Nations data, Goldberg writes that the world"s population is growing at an "unsustainable" rate of 78 million people annually, and it will probably continue to increase by 70 million or 75 million annually through 2020. Almost all of that growth will occur in developing countries, she says. "The ethical and effective way to counter rapid population growth is to bolster women"s rights and improve their access to family planning," as well as access to education, Goldberg writes, adding that "study after study has found that girls who go to school marry later and have fewer, healthier children." Meanwhile, some developed countries -- including Japan, Russia, Italy and Spain -- are seeing a decline in birth rates, a fact that some social conservatives are using "to argue for restrictions on women"s rights." According to Goldberg, "Fertility is reaching dangerously low levels in countries where social attitudes and institutions haven"t caught up with women"s desire to combine work and family. When faced with men who are unwilling to share domestic burdens, inflexible workplaces and day-care shortages, many women respond by having fewer children." However, "when societies make it possible for women to combine having children with pursuing their other ambitions, fertility rates are fine," Goldberg says. She adds, "Give women freedom and support, and they will find reproductive equilibrium, so that when societies do shrink or grow, they do so in a manageable way" (Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 5/17).~ Nicholas Kristof, New York Times: About 500,000 women "die annually from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth without attracting much interest because the victims are typically among the most voiceless people in the world: impoverished, rural, uneducated and female," Kristof writes in a Times opinion piece. He adds, "It"s no mystery how to save the lives of pregnant women; what"s lacking is the will and res." Kristof writes that Sierra Leone, which has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, "is now making progress with the help of the United Nations Population Fund." Former President George W. Bush cut off U.S. funding for UNFPA, but President Obama has restored the funding. Kristof adds that a bill (H.R. 1410) that would "establish American leadership in this area ... has attracted pathetically little attention." He continues that if the lives of women in West Africa "were a priority, there would be many simple ways to keep them alive," such as providing them with bed nets to help protect against malaria or iron tablets to fight anemia at a cost of "just a few dollars" (Kristof, New York Times, 5/17).

New Data Supports Significant Economic And Clinical Value Of MENOPUR(R) In IVF
New data from an economic analysis presented today at this year"s European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) congress showed that, within the parameters of the simulation model used, the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment MENOPUR (highly-purified human menopausal gonatropin or HP-hMG) offered considerable cost-savings over recombinant follicle stimulating hormone (rFSH).1 The cost-effectiveness of HP-hMG compared with rFSH suggested by this data could make it a more attractive choice for use in infertility treatment within a fixed healthcare budget.
News of the day
Bicycle Helmet Laws For Kids Effective But Not Yet The Norm
Studies have shown wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle reduces one"s risk of death by more than 50 percent, yet every three days, a child in the United States is killed while riding a bicycle, and every day at least 100 children are treated in emergency rooms due to bicycle-related head injuries.
Sexual Health

Thyroid Journal: First Comprehensive Guidelines For Managing Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma

New guidelines designed to standardize and optimize the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of patients with Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma (MTC), an uncommon and challenging form of thyroid cancer, have been developed by the American Thyroid Association and published online ahead of print in Thyroid, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The guidelines are available free online at http://www.liebertpub.com/thy. "Following careful peer review, Thyroid has published the first comprehensive set of clinical guidelines for the treatment of all medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) disorders," says Charles H. Emerson, MD, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal and Professor Emeritus at University of Massachusetts Medical School, in Worcester. "This form of thyroid cancer is especially important because of its high mortality, strong inheritance patterns, and associations with other serious glandular disorders. These evidence-based guidelines will become a benchmark for patient management and clinical research, as they illuminate the diagnostic and therapeutic strategies required when caring for gravely ill patients and those in the anxiety-ridden early stages of the disease, and when offering testing and counseling to family members." MTC is a complex disease that accounts for about 4% of all thyroid cancer cases in the United States. Nearly 25% of cases worldwide are familial and present as an autosomal inherited disorder. In individuals with the inherited form of MTC, a preneoplastic lesion called C-cell hyperplasia will first develop and then progress to an invasive, life-threatening malignancy. The American Thyroid Association has compiled 122 evidence-based recommendations that cover a range of clinical topics, including diagnosis and therapy for early disease, genetic testing, surgical management, post-surgical treatment and monitoring, management of persistent or recurrent MTC and metastatic disease, and long-term follow-up. The guidelines also propose directions for future research on MTC. "Medullary thyroid cancer is a rare and fascinating disease that few health care professionals ever master," says Richard T. Kloos, MD, Chair of the ATA Guidelines Task Force, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the American Thyroid Association, and Co-Director of the Ohio State University Thyroid Cancer Unit. "The ATA guidelines promote optimal medical care that is grounded in an evidence-based review of the literature by an international and multidisciplinary panel. It is our hope that they will serve all the professionals that care for these patients, including those in the fields of endocrinology, genetics, pediatrics, radiology, nuclear medicine, surgery, and oncology." Vicki Cohn Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News


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