Strolling through Re/Dress, the vintage plus-size clothing store in Brooklyn, last week, I learned an important lesson in perspective. I was surrounded by cute clothes—frilly lace aprons, sexy leather trenches, pencil skirts, and sailor dresses—and could tell just by looking that not a stitch would fit my size-8 ass. Sizes at Re/Dress start at 14—maybe I could work with something with a narrow cut, or cinch it with a belt?  No. Glumly, I shuffled off to the back of the store, relegated to browse the shoes and purses.

Aha. So this is what it’s like for women of size to shop. This feeling of longing and disappointment I was experiencing for the first time (which trust me, is a different feeling than "it fits but my [fill in body part] doesn't look right) is one of the reasons why a very vocal, tech-savvy, fashion-forward group of women decided to mobilize, and make their voices heard at the first-ever Full-Figured Fashion Week. The event, which occurred in New York City last week, featured fashion shows, panel discussions, and guest appearances from “curvy celebrities” like Hairspray’s Nikki Blonsky and Kim Coles of Living Single. It brought together designers, buyers, marketing professionals, and those just interested in full-figured fashion, and was something of a family reunion for the cadre of bloggers devoted to covering the plus-sized fashion world.

Fat-acceptance activists have been using the Internet to organize and vocalize their resistance against an increasingly fat-phobic world for years; and online communities have helped individuals who often feel invisible thrive. But Full-Figured Fashion Week brought many bloggers face to face for the first time. “Everyone I’ve met here are people I’ve chatted with online,” says Marie Denee, who blogs as The Curvy Fashionista. “It’s like… ‘Are you…?’ Everyone has photos of themselves on Twitter, and we're all trying to match them up.

Denee is part of the “Curvy Collective,” nine prominent fashion bloggers who covered all the week’s events extensively via blogs, video blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. She traveled from Oakland to attend the New York event: it was important, she said, to meet the other women (and one man) in person, and to be a part of what could be history in the making. Whatever it was, these women (and one man) were ready. Talking to some of them was like interviewing the love child of Anna Wintour and César Chávez.

“We’ve become such a strong group of people. People are starting to be more confident in themselves, and designers are starting to take notice,” says Johara P. Tucker, author of the blog Luvin’ My Curves. “With Full Figured Fashion Week right here, we’re making a statement. No one can ignore us after this weekend. We love fashion and are going to take it on our own terms. Since straight-sized fashion won’t give it to us, we’re going to take it.”

The requests are simple: clothes that fit and flatter, as opposed to muumuus and sweats or size-4 dresses sized up. (As women's sizes increase, proportions change, so it doesn't work to take the same pattern you'd use for a smaller size and just expand it. Moreover, different styles flatter different bodies. “We don’t need Daisy Dukes,” one panelist commented.) While there are increasing options online for plus-sized fashions, these women emphasized their desire to shop in malls and boutiques, rather than always have to participate in the colder, less fun online shopping experience. Blonsky noted that what looks good online may not fit when it shows up to your door, and the process of shipping and returning is too much of a hassle. “That gets more expensive than buying the thing itself,” she said during the State of the Curvy Community Panel, which was hosted by the Curvy Collective bloggers. 

For this weekend, at least, the participants in Full-Figured Fashion Week got to shop like the rest of us: merchants came together to show off the best of their full-figured wares, stylists were on hand to offer an appraising eye, and fashion-conscious women not normally represented anywhere in the media got to surround themselves with other glamorous, sophisticated ladies of size. In the process, I learned yet another important lesson, this one about the malleability of beauty standards. A pretty face is a pretty face, and many of the women who attended fashion week would look great at any size. But after two hours surrounded by smoking-hot curvy fashionistas, I found myself wishing I could fill out a plunging neckline or rock a clingy, flowing dress the way some of these women did.

We visited the opening reception and the Designer Showcase taking place last Friday. Check out the festivities in the video above, and give us your take on the state of the curvy community below.

Find out more, after the jump: 

Tomorrow is National HIV Testing Day—do you know your status? One can be forgiven for thinking that HIV awareness days seem like a very '90s throwback. The intensity—some might say hysteria—at the apex of the AIDS crisis has long since subsided, but instead of coming away with a more reasoned, nuanced, and smarter attitude toward safe sex and HIV prevention, most of the country just seems eager to forget everything about that very scary time, including the lessons we learned. 

It's a condition Dr. Susan Blumenthal, former U.S. assistant surgeon general and chair of the Global Health Program at the Meridian International Center, calls "AIDS amnesia" in a new article on the state of AIDS treatment, prevention, research, and policy. She writes:  

It appears that Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest. 

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that paramedics were called to Jackson's rented Holmby Hills home after a call to 911 reported a man who was not breathing, and that he later died of massive cardiac arrest. Paramedics at the scene performed CPR, but they may have arrived too late. According to Dr. Steven Nissen, chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, the window of opportunity emergency technicians have to revive those who suffer from a cardiac arrest is dangerously small—that is, assuming cardiac arrest was to blame. We asked Nissen, who has not treated Jackson, what could have precipitated Jackson’s sudden, shocking death.


Some sources are citing cardiac arrest as the cause of Michael Jackson's death.
There are several types of arrest, though the most common is certainly cardiac. It is very, very common. A fact that many people don’t know is that about a third of people who have a heart attack actually never make it to a hospital.

We do a great job of saving those that we actually get to a hospital alive. But many of them die outside the hospital. You have to get to the patient with a defibrillator within about four minutes to get a good outcome. [The Los Angeles Times reports that Jackson lived about six minutes from the hospital.] Between four and eight minutes things are a little bit questionable, and after eight minutes very, very few people will survive. And that’s why defibrillators have been put in airports and so many public places. Generally, you can’t get a paramedic crew to someone who is down that quickly. If you do good CPR, you can often extend that period some, but it’s still a problem of needing advanced life support—meaning paramedics with defibrillators, drugs, and so on—really within a few minutes or the outcome is generally not very good, which is what it sounds like it wasn’t here.

Some people who have a sudden event like that will have something other than a cardiac arrest; they’ll have a brain aneurysm that burst. We had a congresswoman here in Cleveland, a very wonderful person, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and that happened to her at age 50 or so. He is in the age group when sudden cardiac death is not uncommon. It’s tragic. We’ve seen this with other celebrities. It’s not anything different from what happened to Tim Russert or any one of a number of other people, and it’s always a terrible tragedy when a person who is this young dies of a cardiac cause.

When the event is something other than cardiac, is it apparent to the paramedics?
It’s generally not. Often you don’t even know about it unless you do an autopsy. Because all you know when you get there is that the patient’s heart is not beating, but keep in mind that there are other reasons. Sudden cardiac death—as opposed to sudden death—sudden cardiac death is overwhelmingly the largest cause. We assume that any sudden death like this is cardiac unless it’s proven otherwise.

What are the risk factors?  He’s in the age range, but it does seem like the younger end of the age range.
We see people like this in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. It’s more common in older people, but it certainly happens in people in this age group. The risk factors are the risk factors for heart disease: smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, all the things we talk about incessantly. Of course, whether he had any of these things, it’s certainly an issue. Another thing that often comes up when a celebrity dies suddenly is a potential for drug use. That has happened in other famous cases: you may remember the basketball player Len Bias; first time in his life he ever used cocaine and he died suddenly. Again, I’m not saying that that’s a likely prospect here, but I’m just telling you how we tend to think about patients like this when we see them.
 
There’s a lot of speculation, and while you can’t speak to this case directly, I was hoping you could help us separate fact from fiction. He was working out pretty heavily with a trainer [Lou Ferrigno]. Can excessive training lead to cardiac arrest?
That’s just false. It’s not a common cause.

People are saying that he’s had a lot of surgery and been under a lot of anesthesia. Can repeated surgeries put you at risk for cardiac arrest?
That’s nonsense.

He’s African-American. Is that a risk factor in and of itself, or is just that African-Americans are more likely to have poor health care and poorer diets?
Generally, that’s a reflection of socio-economic status, and he clearly had the resources to have good health care, He certainly wouldn’t have been underprivileged in that sense, so I don’t think it’s a factor. The only factor that is important is that high blood pressure is genetically more common in African-Americans.

Is it possible to have a clean bill of health and still be at risk?
Absolutely. Every cardiologist I know has seen a patient in their office, done a complete examination, had a nice chat with them, given them all the reassurance possible that they were doing fine, then a week, a month later had this happen. There is no way you can predict these things.

Yesterday, Perez Hilton got punched in the face. This lead to karma jokes, and "I've been wanting to punch him in the face for years" jokes, and all sorts of tacky, tasteless comments that make light of the fact that someone was the victim of violence. Yes, Perez is a pain; a pain who ridicules both gay rights activists and gay rights critics when not drawing crude genitalia on paparazzi photos. Did he deserve a beating? No: no one does. And yet that fact gets obscured when the victim of said beating is a churlish gadfly.

Some background: gossip blogger Hilton (nee Mario Lavandeira) is alleging that the manager of the Black Eyed Peas, Liborio Molina, assaulted Hilton backstage at the MuchMusic Video awards in Toronto. (Molina has since turned himself in to police). This came after a heated discussion wherein Will.I.Am asked Perez to lay off the band on Perez's site, and Perez responded by calling Will.I.Am a "f-----." (This is not high level diplomacy, here, people.) Perez called the cops after the attack, then went right to Twitter, asking his fans to do the same. That move, along with the fact that Perez is something of a media punch line while still being an incredibly important (and well-paid) media creator, has lead to lots of eye rolls and rationalizations and aforementioned jokes.

The weirdest of all this victim-blaming comes from musician John Mayer, who has also taken to Twitter to express his disgust with Hilton's handling of the situation. "P!nk kneed me in the nuts outside Chateau Marmont. I was pissing blood for days. Did I make a scene?" he asks in one post. Later, he and Hilton got into a rapid back and forth Twitter conversation (twonversation?), with Mayer insisting that the assault was the direct result of Hilton's abrasive personality. "I'd like to train you in Krav Maga," tweets Mayer. "Then you'll have the situational awareness not to get in someone's face." These types of comments continue, each insisting that Perez could have prevented the attack had he not been so darned annoying. The worst part is that Mayer's little sermons comes from this weird, faux-concerned place of condescending kindness. "From the heart, what you experienced these last 24 hrs is a profound lack of control. You can't blog the world, my friend," writes Mayer.  (Oh, it's from the heart? To a friend? That totally makes up for you excusing the assailant. Thanks, pal!)

Meanwhile, Hilton is responding with a maturity and restraint absent from his earlier...life's work, really. Aside from repeatedly asking Mayer to take the conversation to a more private venue (which...horse is kind of out of the barn there, Mario), he quite reasonably argued that, "Karma would be me losing my site and going bankrupt or what have u...Karma is not getting punched in the face." 

This whole discussion is just a 21st century version of what women and assault victims have been hearing for years. The logic that it falls on the victim to prevent irrational actions of the assailant is really outdated and really, really dangerous. Many victims of violence—and especially domestic violence—will tell you that the slaps, punches, and shoves perpetrated upon them didn't happen when they were just sitting their minding their own business. It came during some sort of disagreement. Maybe she snapped at him out of frustration. Maybe she hit on a particularly sore subject. These are all things that happen during the course of an argument—we're never at our best when tempers are inflamed. But that doesn't make it right, ever, to take the fight from cutting remarks to physical violence.

We all should try to be better people: less annoying or abrasive, less prone to reaching for the cheap (verbal) shot, more sensitive to those around us. But it's not our responsibility to ensure that the person we're arguing with doesn't cross the line from nasty name calling to physical violence. This tired line of thinking keeps women with abusers (because if she just avoided certain subjects...), makes it ok to beat up gay men who have the temerity to walk down a crowded street in the wrong side of town (because really, what did he expect?) and subtly endorses sociopaths who think it's their life's work to beat some sense into people who don't fit a cultural norm. It's Rhianna, it's Matthew Sheppard, it's Angie Zapata. It's wrong.

This is something we all know. Most of us claim to be all about non-violence and peaceful solutions and treating each other with kindness. The actual practice of supporting the victim, however, is a lot harder when the victim is kind of a douche. That, however, is when it's most important: you can't demand that people earn basic human rights with kindness points. 

So ersatz sensitive guy John Mayer is trotting out tired old tropes that basically boil down to "what were you expecting in a skirt that short," Perez Hilton is responding with a level maturity that makes it feel like opposite day, and all this is happening on Twitter. Tawdry, silly, and totally unimportant, especially when people are dying in Iran over the fight for democracy. Still, the point remains: it's never ok to hit someone in anger. Even Perez Hilton.

Update: The women at Jezebel, among others, say I'm brushing off Perez's misogyny and use of homophobic slurs. Let me state here what I should have said more clearly in the first place: Perez's behavior was out of bounds, and there should be consequences. But that reckoning can't be done at the business end of someone's fist. In fact, the second you rough someone up, it becomes much harder to take that someone to task for their abhorrent behavior.

If John Mayer wanted to challenge Hilton on his use of slurs, we'd be having a different conversation. But Mayer didn't write that he wanted to train Hilton in a martial art called "Never Call A Black Dude a F----- Jitsu" to make the point that Perez's language was hurtful and inappropriate. He did it to imply that if you call a "black dude" something gay, you're going to get punched, and that Hilton should have known better.

There's a LOT to say about Hilton's use of language and the impact of his words. Jezebel did a great job starting that conversation, and it's an important one. I chose to focus on Mayer's response, and the inherent dangers of victim-blaming—even, as I said, when that victim is kind of a tool. 

Last week, we interviewed Stuart McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo, in a piece about the dangers of sit-ups and crunches.

McGill, author of Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance (Stuart McGill, 2004) was kind enough send us a video demonstrating a better way to work your abs—including a modified move, called the "McGill crunch" by school children all over Canada. Take a look and adjust your workouts accordingly. For more information, visit McGill's site, backfitpro.com

Is obesity a disability? Advocacy groups want to classify obesity as a disability; doctors think it will prevent them from discussing obesity with their patients. At the same time, overweight patients often find that, like women in menopause, their size becomes a blinding factor to any other potential medical problem. Knee problems? Lose weight. Chest pain? Lose weight. Bleeding from the eyeballs? Lose weight. There's got to be a happy medium... (MSNBC) 

Failing the Smell Test Popular over-the-counter cold reliever Zicam may ruin your sense of smell. The FDA warned that 130 people had reported temporary or permanent damage to their sense of smell attributed to Zicam use. Good news, bad news, all: the bad news is that there's really nothing out there to treat a cold. It's something you just have to suffer through. Good news: I just saved you a lot of money on useless OTC meds, and am giving you full permission to eat some ice cream instead.  (US News)

Are cupcakes evil? Via Gawker, a story of a woman determined to keep junk food out of her children's sticky (with carob chips, we assume) little hands by any means necessary. Also, she thinks Santa is fat. Is she a visionary, a helicopter parent, or just kind of a pain in the neck? And don't parents have the right to control their kid's diet and nutrition, even if the general consensus is that a slice of birthday cake now and then won't kill you? (Gawker)

Morning Video Transition: While you're waiting for the coffee to kick in, check out this video of a teenager with a movement disorder that caused uncontrollable twitching, both before and after brain surgery. (Mayo Clinic)

Losing sleep? You’re not alone. According to the National Sleep Foundation, a third of Americans are losing zzz’s over the state of the economy, personal financial woes and stress on the job—assuming they still have a job. Drugs are the fastest, surest way to a night’s shuteye. But many people don’t like sleeping pills or, well, don’t have the insurance to pay for them.

If that’s you, sleep consultant Michael Krugman, founder of the Sounder Sleep System, may be able to help. Krugman holds “sleep sominars” in which he teaches drug-free approaches to shaking insomnia. More than 200 instructors in 12 countries are now teaching his method, which includes 50 different techniques. And in July, he will be issuing a set of three CD’s called “Rest Assured.”

Since I am broad-shouldered and have somewhat of a sturdy gait, people tend to mistake me for an athlete. While I played my fair share of sports growing up, I never had the requisite grace, coordination, or speed to be anything other than a steady member of the JV squad. (My sister, the college swimmer, got those genes: she did her first triathlon on a whim and returned home with the third-place medal. She also won the mountain bike being raffled off, because her athletic prowess is so great that it extends even to games of chance.)

So when we heard Reebok had designed a trapeze-based course with Cirque du Solei being offered at Equinox, it seemed like the perfect chance to make a fool of myself on camera in the name of investigative reporting and blog hits. Fitness classes—especially the seemingly fun, trendy ones involving dance or stepping or synchronized movement of any kind—have previously translated into about 60 minute of stumbling and humiliation for me, neither of which burn too many calories.

Find out if I flew through the air—or landed on my butt—after the jump. 

courtesy of Lee Ann Wong

Lee Ann Wong, the fan favorite from season one of Bravo's Top Chef, has a lot going on: she's now the executive chef for Kogi New York: the original Kogi, in LA, is the insanely popular Korean BBQ truck locatable only via Twitter. On Sunday, she was working along side Justin Timberlake as he launched his new tequilla, 901 Silver, in New York City. (She, along with former contestants Sam Talbot and Huang Huynh, created some drinks and snacks made with 901 that were served at the event). And somehow, in the middle of all this, she's lost 55 pounds.

Wong says she enlisted the help fellow contestant Andrea Berman (the health food enthusiast) and lost the weight despite "never setting foot in a gym." Prior to spending her days in a kitchen and her nights in the late-night burger bars frequented by New York's culinary set, Wong was a size four, and notes that "keeping the weight off is not all that hard." The ease with which she says the weight came off, and the with which she's maintaining the weight, lends credence to the idea that one's body wants to clock in at a certain size, and will settle into that amount quickly with the right nutrition. Wong says she's virtually eliminated dairy (including cooking with butter) and is relying on the strong flavors found in Asian foods to keep her pallet happy and the meals she makes interesting. (Of course, not all of us have a size-four set point, which means that working out is a necessity if the end goal is squeezing into skinny jeans.) She also stressed the importance of eating slowly. "Food should be an event. Half the pleasure is taking the time to eat it," she says. "I really learned how to slow myself down."

Hopefully, some of her healthier cooking tricks will make their way into Kogi's wares when the trucks start rolling in New York.

Philip & Karen Smith / Getty Images

I have a friend named Sue. Actually, “Sue” isn’t her real name, and she isn’t really a friend: she’s something akin to a lost sorority sister – we went to the same college, participated in the same activities, and had a lot of mutual respect and admiration for one another. But since graduation, we’ve fallen out of touch, and the only way I know about Sue, her life and her family is through her Facebook updates. That’s why I felt almost like a voyeur when Sue announced, via Facebook,the death of her young son. I was surprised she had chosen to share something so personal online -- and then ashamed, because since when did I become the arbiter of what’s appropriate for that kind of grief?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized Facebook might be the perfect venue for tragic news: it’s the fastest way to disseminate important information to the group without having to deal with painful phone calls; it allowed well-meaning friends and acquaintances to instantly pass on condolences, which the family could read at their leisure, and it eliminated to possibility that were I to run into Sue in the supermarket, I’d ask unknowingly about her son and force her to replay the story over again.

Numerous studies have shown that a strong network of friends can be crucial to getting through a crisis, and can help you be healthier in general. But could virtual friends, like the group of online buddies that reached out to Sue, be just as helpful as the flesh-and-blood versions?

We investigate, after the jump.

 

After she was hired to write a blog about a fictional scorned woman who exacts 14 Days of Wrath on her cheating husband, Eva Nagorski realized just how pervasive the theme of revenge is -- from ancient times to the digital age.  In her new book The Down and Dirty Dish on Revenge: Serving It Up Nice and Cold to that Lying, Cheating Bastard (St. Martin's Press), Nagorski looks at the  psychology of revenge, why it's important to talk about this very human reaction, and dishes up lots of juicy stories.  Excerpts: 

So you've confirmed that the bastard who wasted the last few years of your life has been cheating on you or is about to kick you to the curb.  That all the times cleaning up after him, taking care of him when he was sick, dealing with his psycho, overbearing parents, listening to his problems at work or his frustration about not doing what he wants to do, has literally meant nothing.  That everything you invested in him has just been flushed down the toilet, clogged the toilet, overflowed the toilet, and finally swirled down the toilet into the pipes of the hereafter.

You want your dignity back.  You want to stop the pain.  No, you want him to feel the pain, the same way you have.  Actually, you want him to suffer more.  You've found out the truth and you're ready to hand him his ass on a shiny, silver platter.

You know the man (Moses), you know the place (Mount Sinai), and you know the commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”  Jewish law held that both parties who committed the crime of adultery were to be put to death.  Simple, effective.  The Egyptians took a different rout: The man was whipped a thousand times with rods and the woman’s nose was sliced off.  The Greeks plucked out the eyes of adulterers, and the Romans made sure adulterers were either banished -- after cutting off their ears and noses -- stitched up in sacks and thrown into the sea, or burned to ashes.  The Saxons burned the adulteress, put a gibbet over her ashes, and then hung the adulterer over it.  Decorative!

Why are there stories of revenge in every single country of the world and since the very beginning of time?  The instinct is in all of us, no matter who we are, where we’re from, and what time period we live in.  So don’t second-guess your feelings or feel bad about them – your vengeful desires are simply natural!  It just depends on the type of personality you have to determine how far you decide to take them.

When “Katherine” found out her husband was cheating on her, she plastered posters around the neighborhood that featured a photo of him with her and their kids, their wedding date, and in large letters: WAMMD – Wives Against Married Men Dating.

Kristina Gordon of the University of Tennessee suggests that there are some positive aspects to exacting revenge, “in some ways, feeling stronger, feeling that you’re showing yourself that you’re not powerless, that you’re getting some sense of control, that you want to say what happened was wrong and should not have happened,” adding, “I think that’s a very healthy thing for people to do.”

One woman found out her husband was cheating so she took his prized wine collection, carefully catalogued in their wine cellar, and let the bottles bathe in a bathtub.  All the labels peeled off, and then she put the bottles – with no labels – back in the cellar.

Technology has become the kiss of death for illicit romances.  While it may be easy to hide affairs at first, the digital age also made it easier to sniff out affairs as soon as there is a whiff of suspicion.  Our lives are now recorded on our computer hard drives, office servers and digital phone memory, so messages sent can easily be found or retrieved.

Many law firms say that a large – and growing – number of divorce cases enter evidence into the legal proceedings like email, text messages or cell phone bills.  While it’s usually been his word against hers, now it can be much harder to dispute emails and text messages that say “C U @ 8 – BRNG KY,” written proof that he’s straying.

One DJ was interviewing a model on his radio show and joked that he’d leave his wife for her.  His wife didn’t find it funny and sold off his expensive sports car on eBay for $1.

But all this technology does seem to have an upside.  The same conveniences that have made it easier for men to stray can make it easier to make men pay.  The suspicious wives and girlfriends of the world are now retaliating by sending mass emails, revealing intimate details about their cheating lovers (whether they're true or not, and the latter of course constitutes libel and can put you in legal jeopardy), creating personal websites that detail the end of the affair, posting their ex's details on a gay singles’ site or simply spamming their email addresses.  People are taking full advantage of the technological devices: text messaging, emailing, buying camera phones and purchasing gadgets that you used to read about only in novels or see in James Bond movies.  Technology has evolved to the point where you can walk into a spy shop and buy state-of-the-art surveillance equipment as if you were “Q”.  Extracting a pound of flesh has only become more fun with all of these doodads.  And a freebie comes with your purchases: the anonymity factor.  Doing things like sending unidentified text messages to someone’s private cell phone is reminiscent of the good ol’ days of prank calling, when you could get away with it since caller ID was only a futuristic concept and *69 only meant a sex position.

In the end, figuring out what makes you happy is truly the only way to move on past that lying, cheating bastard.  However you reach that point -- whether by shipping everything he owns to a refugee camp in Africa or accepting the fact that he’ll always be one flighty Peter Pan (and no woman – not even you – will change him!) or forgiving him for having a threesome with the babysitter and her sister – is up to you.  Whatever it is, it should be what most satisfies you. And the best revenge of all may be reaching the point where you’re ready to move on—and ready to forget all about revenge and about him.

From The Down and Dirty Dish on Revenge by Eva Nagorski. Copyright © 2009 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Griffin.

Sotomayor Is Not A Bully She's a smart, tough legislator who challenges lawyers on both sides. Nina Totenberg delivers an in-depth look at the judge's temperament and determines that her style of questioning and habit of interrupting is no worse than anyone else on the bench. A Sotomayor mentor who investigated rumors about her style determined that her questions and tone were the same as men on the Appellate Court, and goes right ahead and calls those rumors "sexist." Totenberg, after questioning other lawyers, judges, and analyzing audio tapes of Sotomayor's performance, concludes thusly: "If she sometimes dominates oral arguments....if she's feisty, even pushy, then she should fit right in on the US Supreme Court." (NPR)

Extreme Measures Raise Risk Weight-loss surgeries like gastric bypass increase the risk of fracture. The Mayo Clinic studied 100 patients and found that one-fifth of those who had weight-loss surgery reported bone fractures, which is about twice the normal rate. Most patients reported multiple fractures, especially in their hands and feet. Weight loss surgery can lead to vitamin D deficiency and otherwise affect bone health, though the exact reason why fractures are up is unknown. (BBC)

Sex Selection In The US Disturbing data from the US Census suggests that Asian families in America are using sex-selection techniques to enforce a bias for male children. Families with a first, female child are more likely than average to have a second, male child.

In general, more boys than girls are born in the United States, by a ratio of 1.05 to 1. But among American families of Chinese, Korean and Indian descent, the likelihood of having a boy increased to 1.17 to 1 if the first child was a girl, according to the Columbia economists. If the first two children were girls, the ratio for a third child was 1.51 to 1 — or about 50 percent greater — in favor of boys.

American companies have picked up on this bias, offering sex selection services—not necessarily abortion—in Indian and Chinese language newspapers. Fertility experts say that most American families prefer female children, but that the cultural preference for male children in Asia has carried over to the USA (NY Times).

Transplant Trouble Japan's transplant laws, which prohibit anyone from under 15 from donating organs, are called into question as young children with serious but treatable conditions are denied lifesaving surgery.  (CNN)

Hey Slackers! Getting ready for the weekend? Big plans? Maybe eat some barbecue, hang out with the fam, hit the town?

Meet Dr. Dale Hull. Tomorrow morning, while we're sleeping off our Friday night festivities, he'll be running a marathon. Some of our readers who have similarly athletic plans may wonder why Dale Hull gets recognition and they do not.

After the jump, NEWSWEEK's Rebecca Shabad talks to Dr. Hull today about his recovery, his work, and his big day tomorrow:

Catchy, no? Too bad it’s all lies. There aren’t too many fish in the sea: we've eaten them.

Find out why it matters—and what you can do—after the jump. 

By Claudia Kalb

In the aftermath of his son Jett's death, John Travolta told Bahamian police that Jett had autism. This according to police reports published by the National Enquirer (which, while not the most respected news source, have gotten scoops on big stories. They also pay their sources, which helps them obtain documents like these). If true, this admission marks a long-awaited moment.

Hollywood types and autism advocates had been speculating about Jett's condition for years before the 16-year-old died in January. Critics accused the Travoltas, who are Scientologists, of denying their son's condition and, possibly, denying him appropriate care. Many of them went as far as diagnosing Jett themselves. On one site, a user posted a YouTube clip of the Travolta family in the streets of Paris. Labeled, "Video proof of Jett Travolta's autism," the clip showed what the user claimed were tell-tale signs of autism, including the "100 Mile Look." Despite all the chatter, the Travolta's insisted that their son had Kawasaki Disease, an inflammation of the blood vessels. Even after his death, they never mentioned autism.

Why does it matter now? Over at Gawker, the commenters are decrying the site's decision to publicize the news as an "in your face, Scientology!" kind of expose. Says commenter user_21938, "There are plenty of other opportunities to highlight the flaws and idiocy of Scientology. You can afford to leave the Travoltas alone."

This alleged statement is important—but not because it exposes a supposed inconsistency in Travolta's faith. The autism world is filled with controversies: over vaccines, over treatments, over diagnostic labels. The uproars cause infighting, the infighting stalls progress. If Jett was autistic, at least the Travolta hoopla—which consumed a significant amount of time and energy in certain circles of the autism world—can come to an end.

Consensus on Jett's diagnosis could inspire some much-needed kindness and support in the autism world, for both the Travolta's and for the entire autism community. Travolta also has star power, of course, and his acknowledgment, no matter how private, could help eliminate the rampaging stigma that too often accompanies the condition.

Something good should come out of Jett Travolta's tragic death. In this case, a public acknowledgment of autism—along with the end of some nasty, speculative, counter-productive infighting—might just be it. It would raise awareness and put a face to the disorder: the face of a young man who was loved not for his diagnosis, but for who he was.

by Raina Kelley

Do you remember being 16? If you were anything like me, you responded to the admonitions of your elders with eye-rolling, loud sighing and deep suspicion--if not an outright refusal to believe anything a grownup said that didn’t directly correlate with your own core beliefs. I grew up in the age of “Just Say No” and laughed at the idea that any adult, even a first lady or Mr. T, could understand adolescent behavior better than I. That’s why parents should approach 16 and Pregnant, MTV's newest documentary series, with great trepidation.

That's because 16 and Pregnant, which airs tonight at 9 p.m., is a bleakly realistic look at six girls trying to navigate pregnancy, babies and high school. Unadorned by the cutesy graphics and “expert” witnesses of other “ripped from the headlines” reality shows, 16 and Pregnant does not glamorize these girls lives or choices in any way. Watching the dreams of starry-eyed adolescents come crashing down is usually the stuff of Disney. But in 16 and Pregnant, there are no happy endings.

In an ideal world, this series would be a cautionary tale for any teenager tempted by the idea of unprotected sex. But in the real world, adolescents are usually repelled by teachable moments. And so I fear that this show, which really deserves all the awards it's sure to receive, may end up missing completely the very audience it needs to reach.

So parents, beware. Don't DVR this show and expect to sit down with your kids for some “very important family time.” That won’t work. It just embarrasses teenagers, making them physically incapable of paying any attention. Instead, plan a stealth attack. Change the channel abruptly when they enter the room, then excuse yourself. When they press “last channel” (and they always do), they will not be able to avoid being riveted by this show. Better yet, tell them not to bother watching at all: 16 and Pregnant will then become irresistible.

Just don’t say it’s important or thoughtful or smart or required (even though it is and should be). That’ll be the kiss of death, trust me.

(Are you a teenager? Then don't you dare watch these excerpts from 16 and Pregnant. We are warning you. Step away right now. You'll be in big trouble, missy.)

Nicotine Delites? We've heard of candy cigarettes, but this is ridiculous. RJ Reynolds is introducing a tobacco-based mint for adults (because grown-up loooove candy) sold in shiny packaging. It makes business sense for tobacco companies to try and branch out to smokeless products now that it's illegal to light up at so many bars and restaurants, but candy? Come on. When your product makes Camel Snus look like a good idea, it's time to fire your development team. (MSNBC.com)

World Health Organization About To Declare Swine Flu A Pandemic Again. For real this time. (Reuters)

Dirty Gels: The Food and Drug Administration warns that antibacterial agents made by a company called Clarcon are... wait for it... FULL OF BACTERIA. The irony is delicious; the potential skin infections not so much. Clarcon provides products for industrial use, so keep an eye out at your workplace for skin protectors and hand sanitizers with brand names like CitruShield, Dermassentials, Magic Touch, and Pure Effect. (Consumer Reports)

RX Rip-offs Remember that time on Sex and The City where Samantha bought fake Fendi and someone ended up stealing her identity, and she got kicked out of the Playboy mansion? This is kind of the same, thing except instead of fake handbags, it's fake pharmaceuticals, and instead of public humiliation, people are dying: worldwide, Pfizer has reported a 30 percent increase in seizure of counterfeit prescription drugs, In Africa and East Asia, up to 67 percent of chloroquine tablets for malaria prevention failed quality checks. (Science Based Medicine)

Via Andrew Sullivan, a fun little video about the elements. (If one finds same-sex slow dancing NSFW, this video is NSFW.)

The website featured at the end of the video is for a careers page at the European Commission's research department. I was hoping for something a little cooler from a link that ended with "MarieCurieActions."  Still, Europe always have the cooler, sexier science and health ads: even their chemistry help-wanted ads are sexy. 

"Playing Safely," the online safe-sex ad campaign sponsored by The United Kingdom's National Health Service, was a thing of genius (but since disabled, so you'll have to trust my current memory and my early-20s sense of humor, unless some internet superstar can find a cached version somewhere). The site that's taken its place is 100 times slicker and more interesting than the United States' government-sponsored safe-sex website, but that's only because the US does not have a government-sponsored safe-sex website—at least, not one that comes up on the first few Google clicks. And since my attention span at 4:30 pm closely resembles the attention span of a sex-obsessed teenage boy, I feel confident in saying a site that far buried in a search queue does no good to anyone.   

This video has been making the blog-rounds for a few weeks now; I'm totally late to the bandwagon. But I'm posting it anyway because:

1) My love for Miss Julia Sugarbaker is real and true, and that love extends to posting excerpts from Dixie Carter's late-80s yoga video.

2) Much of the reaction to this video has been of the "God, what a loon!" variety, which totally misses the point. Yes, the pose looks ridiculous, which she admits straight away.  But she doesn't care, because doing "The Lion" makes her feel good, and she wants her viewers to get the same energy boost. While haters are snickering about how silly she looks, she (or at least, the digitally archieved version of Ms. Carter) is happy, smiling, and content.

A big reason people are reluctant to start working out is their fear of looking stupid. And let's face it—exercise of all varieties often requires a lot of goofy faces, awkward body positioning and uncouth grunts and groans. Most of the time, no one notices, because they're too busy concentrating on their own workout (at the gym) or life dramas (everywhere else).But slap a few isolated moments of an exercise video on YouTube, and it's suddenly comic fodder.

That doesn't mean it's not ok to laugh."The Lion" is more than a little silly, which is why Carter's husband, who perhaps anticipated the mass market for video humiliation that is the Internet, recommended she leave it out of the video. But she didn't—she roared like a loud, proud, yoga-happy crazy woman, and for that, I salute her.

A Woman's Victorious Tale of Cancer Survival: A nice read for those of you (like me) moving a little slowly this morning. No need to rush into the work week head on! (Pharmablog)

Tickling Gorillas: Will be the name of the NEWSWEEK.com house band. It's also part of a process scientists are using to categorize human laughter. This is old news to fans of public radio, since it was featured on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me this weekend, but if you want more of the science behind punchlines, check out this very interesting (and only slightly nerdy) post. (Scienceblogs)

When a female instructor was put at the front of the classroom, nearly two-thirds of the grade point gender gap evaporated. (It was also the case that men performed better when taught by other men, but the difference was far less substantial.) The authors persuasively demonstrate that the overall male-female performance difference is due in large part to the fact that men dominate the Air Force Academy science faculty (as is the case in most schools), with only 23 percent of courses taught by women. (Slate)

The Least Tragic Consequence of Dr. Tiller's Murder Now that many Kansas clinics have been shut down, anti-abortion protestors are bored. (NYTimes.com)

In The Consult this morning, we linked to an article about a Jamaican dance craze called daggering. According to this article, doctors in Jamaica attribute daggering to a threefold increase in broken penises. As a result, government officials have banned any media promoting the dance, which simulates rough sex. Apparently, those who try to dagger in the bedroom--the same moves minus the "simulation"--are getting hurt.

Take a look at the example of daggering, shown here in a Mr. Vegas video. It's totally SFW, which prompts the question...

...is this really the root of an island-wide epidemic?

Rebecca Shabad investigaes and finds out more than you want to know, after the jump. 

Take some time today to visit Andrew Sullivan's blog over at the Atlantic, where one of the most capital-F fascinating discussions in recent blog history (which is pretty much all of blog history) is taking place.

After the murder of Kansas physician George Tiller, Sullivan—the deeply Catholic, economically-conservative pundit—did a great job of  covering the political and sociological implications of the crime. But he also started posting first-person accounts of late-term abortion experiences, including some women who chose not to terminate and some who were under Tiller's care. (Tiller provided third-term abortions, one of only three doctors in the country to do so.) An excerpt:

The walls of the clinic reception and waiting room are literally covered with letters from patients thanking him. Some were heartbreaking - obviously young and/or poorly educated people thanking Dr. Tiller for being there when they had no other options, explaining their family, church etc. had abandoned them.

I remember my wife, foggy with sedation after the final procedure, being helped from the exam table. He had her sit up and put her arms around his neck, and then he lifted her into a wheelchair. "You give good hugs" she whispered. He paused just for a moment. "You're just fine," he told her.

After that, more families began providing their stories about the tough choices they had to make regarding a terminating a late pregnancy, all of which are, to paraphrase Sullivan's labels on these posts, "so personal," honest, and heartbreaking. (A round-up of the stories are here, though more have since been published)

That alone would constitute some highly-recommended reading. But the conversation hasn't stopped there. It has expanded to include the point of view of former abortion protesters, the arguments for and against abortion limits, and the debate over what role men should play in shaping abortion policies—basically, it's a smart, reasoned, respectful discussion about abortion, something which is sorely needed but exceedingly rare. (Today, as the discussion has expanded into some more general pro-life vs pro-choice arguments, some of the nuance is lost, and one can see signs of the familiar divisions and rhetoric.)

Throughout it all, Sullivan has been as transparent and honest with his readers as they have been with him, and as the posts continue, one can watch his personal beliefs regarding abortion evolve right there on screen. On Monday night, he said, "I still cannot in good conscience support these [late-term] abortions." By Wednesday morning, he was admitting that:

I am beginning to believe that these abortions, given their excruciating moral and personal choices, may be the most defensible in context of all abortions. And yet they seem to be taking life in a more viscerally distressing way. I need time to think and rethink these things. I would not have without reading these extraordinary accounts.

In order to keep another doctor from ever being murdered for his work treating women in need, in order to move towards that elusive "possibility of common ground" that President Obama called for in regards to abortion, we need more thinking and rethinking, more sharing of extraordinary accounts, and more discourse. Sullivan's work on this has been a very, very good start.

RELATED: On NEWSWEEK.com, writer Amanda Robb adds another powerful, personal voice to this discussion. Her uncle, Dr. Bart Slepian, a Buffalo obstratrician, was murdered by an anti-abortion terrorist in 1998, and the death of Dr. Tiller has brought back painful memories. Read her story here.

Last month, NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bennett's wrote a heartbreaking story about the Catsouras family, who are fighting to scrub the internet of gristly accident-scene photos taken moments after their daughter Nikki's death. Now, another tale of private, post-mortem photos posted online has made the news.

CBSNews reports that a New York City emergency medical technician was charged today with official misconduct for posting to his Facebook page crime-scene photos of a murder victim. Mark Musarella  was charged for taking a cell-phone photo of Caroline Wimmer, 30, who was strangled in her Staten Island home, then uploading those photos to the social-networking site. Unlike the highway patrol police* responsible for leaking the photos of Nikki Catsouras, who say they purposefully e-mailed the photos to a small group of friends and family members as a cautionary tale about the dangers of speeding, Musarella's attorney insists that the photos were posted accidentally. (Nothing has yet been reported about why Musarella snapped a private pic of the victim in the first place).

Sadly, social networking sites may have also played a role in Wimmer's death; her mother tells CBS that rumors on MySpace precipitated her death. Calvin Lawson, 28 has been charged with her murder.

With almost every cell phone acting as both a camera and a personal computer, stories like these may become all too common. Let's hope that both the law and the training procedures for emergency personnel catches up to the technology before more families suffer. One small upside to stories like these: they give evidence to how the worst in some people can bring out the best in others. After the article about the Catsouras photos ran in NEWSWEEK, readers responded with a groundswell of support and action, doing what they can to ensure that Nikki is remembered as she lived.

*correction amended: these men were originally identified as EMTs in this post.

Out of respect for both the Catsourus and Wimmer families, we're going to close the comments to this post.

This just in: NEWSWEEK has learned that in the one-month period allotted by the National Institute of Health, the NIH received 49,015 comments in response to its draft guidelines for human stem cell research. Between April and May, remarks poured in from all over the country and from a wide variety of interested parties: stem cell scientists, religious organizations and the general public.

There has been something of a collective mood swing among stem cell scientists this year. Researchers were ebullient when President Obama lifted Bush-era restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in March. But many were hugely disappointed when the NIH’s draft guidelines came out a month later. Two major concerns: first, the government has proposed very specific standards for the informed consent process—i.e. what couples need to know before they agree to donate their frozen embryos to research. Many of the lines developed from human embryos over the last decade would not meet these stringent new standards, and research using those cells would therefore be ineligible for government money. The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) submitted a letter saying that researchers shouldn’t have to start from scratch. “It is critical that a mechanism be developed to ensure that the past ten years of scientific progress with these lines not be lost to federally-funded research,” the ISSCR wrote. The guidelines also rule out somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) or so-called therapeutic cloning. Scientists want to use SCNT to create cell lines that have genetic conditions built in, which they say would allow them to study diseases as they develop and ideally create more targeted ways to treat them.

Religious groups had their own take. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops argued in their letter that other stem cell research, including adult stem cells and newer induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), show great promise, and that destroying human embryos is morally flawed

The NIH will be reviewing the comments over the next few weeks and expects to release its final guidelines no later than July 7. Fireworks expected one way or the other. Stay tuned.

According to Entertainment Tonight, Oprah has responded to NEWSWEEK's cover story this week, “Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures & You.” Sayeth Oprah:

For 23 years, my show has presented thousands of topics that reflect the human experience, including doctors' medical advice and personal health stories that have prompted conversations between our audience members and their health care providers. I trust the viewers, and I know that they are smart and discerning enough to seek out medical opinions to determine what may be best for them.

Read Kosova and Wingert's original article here.
Read the response from the web here.
Read Raina Kelley's take on whether criticizing Oprah is appropriate here.

By Rebecca Shabad 

For the millions of Americans suffering from pteromechanophobia (aka fear of flying), the presumed crash of an Air France flight off the cost of Brazil only solidified their belief that planes are nothing but death traps in the sky. But considering as many as two in five Americans may have a flying phobia, why is the entire nation collectively glued to the tube, waiting for more details about the crash? NEWSWEEK talked to Jonathan Bricker, an assistant professor-affiliate of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, to figure out why we need to know—and what all this information overload may be doing to our psyches.

 Get his take on TV news, the fear of driving vs. flying, and the need for more comprehensive data about who, exactly, fears the friendly skies after the jump. 

An Apple A Day Keeps Forclosure Away? Medical debt caused 62 percent of bankruptcies last year, and 72 percent of those who filed due to health reasons had insurance. Diabetes and neurological illnesses were the main reasons people were pushed to the brink financially. There's no jokes to be made here, really. This is just scary and sad.  (Business Week)  

Fido Pharmaceuticals The first ever drug for dog cancer has been approved by the FDA. This is funny and quirky if you're a cat person, and totally exciting and important if you like dogs. Since I am a dog person, this is a breakthrough of modern science, and not a totally waste of researchers' time and drug company's money (and trust me; drug companies will make LOTS of money on this).  (ABCNews.com)

What Makes A Pandemic: We're about to find out. The New York Times says The World Health Organization is getting closer to declaring swine flu a global pandemic, though it doesn't say what that really means. So far, swine flu has hit 62 countries and caused hundreds of deaths. the death toll is low enough, however, that the WHO may note that the H1N1 virus isn't very lethal. (NYTimes)

HMO in a Handbasket Healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente is sponsoring 30 farmers markets across the country to take place outside of hospitals. The markets will promote healthy eating, the preventatitve powers of good nutrition, and provide a respite from the normal hospital fare of coffee and donuts, and junk food -- A 2006 study showed that 42 percent of hospitals had fast food restaruatns in their buildings. (CNN.com)

A few months ago, NEWSWEEK published an article called "Generation Diva," about the increased interest tween girls show for things like pedicures, facials, cosmetics and other beauty treatments previously considered grown-up luxuries. (One could argue that "diva" is a pejorative term that puts blame on young kids who don't know any better, kids who are obviously lacking some responsible parental supervision. Let's be clear: we think parents need to step up and start enforcing some innocence—big time—as evidenced by the link below). 

In the article, Jessica Bennett succinctly wrote:

...today's girls are getting caught up in the beauty maintenance game at ages when they should be learning how to read—and long before their beauty needs enhancing. Twenty years ago, a second grader might have played clumsily with her mother's lipstick, but she probably didn't insist on carrying her own lip gloss to school.

Perhaps you thought we were kidding. Perhaps, you thought, we were making a big deal out of nothing; that with today's UV rays, it makes sense to teach 'em young about skincare. Was it really that bad? Were we just a bunch of hyperventilating, over-reacting newsmongers?

Ahem. 

Via Jezebel, those are photos of Miley Cyrus's nine-year-old sister and her eight-year-old galpal. In eyeliner. Drinking Redbull. On the red carpet. In bathing suits. Carrying handbags, and a poodle, and a whole host of psycho-social baggage that will follow them throughout their adult life.

Sometimes we hate to be right. 

By Claudia Kalb

Most of the health books I get from publishers fall into the dreaded self-help camp: how to lose 30 pounds, how to cure depression, how to fix your marriage. So I was immediately intrigued when a book called "A Brain Wider than the Sky: A Migraine Diary" crossed my desk. The poetic title drew me in-it’s a gem from Emily Dickinson. And the book, thankfully, never promises to solve anything. Instead, Andrew Levy, an English proffessor at Butler University in Indianapolis, writes a narrative about migraines-the history of the condition, the physical details of how his own migraines feel, and the way the migraines he suffers affect his relationship with his wife and 4-year-old son.

Not everyone responded positively to the NEWSWEEK cover story on Oprah's role in promoting questionable medical advice. Several commentors questioned if this article is another example of how, as reader Doris Grayson (graysond) writes, "the media can't accept a powerful, decent Black woman as a role model."  Another reader, pencilcase, thinks, "Oprah's being attacked because the thought of a poor overweight black looking black woman from the ghetto transforming herself into one of the richest & most influential people in the world (& daring to use thatt influence to help make a black man president) makes the white media elite's stomach turn."

Everyone knows that road to flat, tight abs is paved with crunches. Lots and lots and lots of excruciating crunches. Or is it?

As it turns out, the exercises synonymous with strong, attractive abs may not be the best way to train your core—and may be doing damage to your back.  

“We stopped teaching people to do crunches a long, long time ago,” says Dr. Richard Guyer, president of the Texas Back Institute.

So should you abandon crunches as well? Read more after the jump to find out.

The Nine Unhealthiest Foods ABC breaks it down, courtesy of Center for Science in the Public Interest.

(ABCNews.com)

Poor Kids Get No Breaks:  Even children who manage to outlive, flee, or move past a difficult childhood may not be able to fully escape:. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that many adult diseases are born from negative childhood experiences. Not so much "had braces for five years" negativity as much as poverty, abuse, neglect, severe maternal depression, parental substance abuse, and family violence. These experiences can cause what researchers deem "toxic" levels of stress, and the lingering effects of this stress on the brain could result in diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and stroke later in life. So what's the excuse for those of us with only moderately stressful childhoods? (Rockefeller University)

The Seven Year Itch The friends we have now are a really awesome, lovely, bunch --- too bad half of them might be gone within the next seven years. Scientist found that most people shed about half of their friends every seven years to accommodate newer friends. As a result, the size of the social networks stay the same, but the faces change (MSNBC)

FDA Seeks More Transparency The Food and Drug Administration announced the creation of a new task force, designed to make the group's actions and decisions more transparent. As the Wall Street Journal points out, about what the agency want to be more transparent is not yet...clear.  (Wall Street Journal)

Yesterday, the latest issue of NEWSWEEK hit the stands, featuring Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert's smart, gutsy cover story on what one might call the Oprah Winfrey Medical Misinformation Complex, were one not so afraid of a lawsuit. Shorter version (though you should read the whole thing): Oprah, who has tremendous influence and credibility, promotes health "cures" that may be at best ineffective and at worst dangerous. Both media and medical bloggers took note of the story, and have been discussing its merits online. Some examples:

PZ Myers, a biologist, associate professor at the University of Minnesota and a blogger at ScienceBlogs was one of the first responders:

It's about time one of the big media players pointed out that she is promoting dangerous fake therapies…all with a happy smile, of course, and a message of positive self-esteem for women. It's still credulous glop, though. 

Meanwhile, The New Republic's Isaac Chotiner speculates that such a "lengthy, entertaining takedown" is indicative of the new NEWSWEEK. "Somehow I do not think the old Newsweek would have published this piece, let alone put it on the cover," he writes, while observing that:

Those of us who pretend not to do not watch Opah {sic} have long had the unfounded speculation that the cult surrounding her is vaguely sinister. Weston Kosova's and Pat Wingert's piece does much to further this impression. The article is full of stories about Oprah's willingness--indeed desire--to fill up airtime with inane spirituality and, more worryingly, unscientific and potentially harmful "medical" advice. Suzanne Somers and Jenny McCarthy are not, as it turns out, professional doctors.

The article really struck a nerve with Dr. Dave Gorski, a blogger at Science-Based Medicine (bookmark it: the site is a great source of thorough, critical reviews of both the latest research and medical fads). The first sentence quoted here can only be described as a "run-on of rage":

Oprah has about as close to no critical thinking skills when it comes to science and medicine as I’ve ever seen, and she uses the vast power and influence her TV show and media empire give her in order to subject the world to her special brand of mystical New Age thinking and belief in various forms of what can only be characterized as dubious medical therapies at best and quackery at worst.

No one, and I mean no one, brings pseudoscience, quackery, and antivaccine madness to more people than Oprah Winfrey does every week...Consequently, whether fair or unfair, she represents the perfect face to put on the problem that we supporters of science-based medicine face when trying to get the message out to the average reader about unscientific medical practices, and that’s why I am referring to the pervasiveness of pseudoscience infiltrating medicine as the “Oprah-fication” of medicine.

Living Oprah, a  blogger who spent an entire year following the Big O's advice, offers a quick reaction, leaving me curious to know more about her experience (so now I'll have to read her blog. Very crafty):

I had mixed results from the health guidance I learned on Oprah's show and there were a couple items that conflicted with my own doctor's guidance. My doc always shrugged at how many supplements I knocked back in 2008, for instance.

The article even resonated across the pond: Alex Massie at The Spectator, while writing an intro incredibly similar to Mr. Chotnier's at TNR's (all while making very flattering TNR references, so...maybe it's one of those very subtle immitation/flattery things?), notes that:

it's worth being reminded that Oprah peddles the anti-MMR nonsense that, if its supporters have their way, is much more likely to harm many more children than would be affected even if their crackpottery were based on a sound evaluation of the risks of immunisation. Which, as best I can tell, it isn't.  

And of course, those kids at Gawker chimed in as well:

This lengthy article is actually far too kind (and brief) to baby-killing nut Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccine crusade, and yet it still manages to be a very damning indictment of how Oprah is trying to kill your poor mother.

There's bound to be some dissent from those in favor of unregulated bio-identical hormones, those who think opposing MMR vaccines is not nonsense, but gospel, and Oprah fans who say she does far more good than harm. We want to read it all: everyone with an opinion is encouraged to share, either in the comments section of the article itself, or below....

UPDATE: Raina Kelley gives her take on whether or not it's responsible to criticize a powerful minority role model here.

Sad News For Children With Autism An anti-depressant commonly used to treat the repetitive behaviors of children with autism is as effective as a placebo—but with worse side effects. Citalopram improved repetitive behaviors—like flapping—in 33 percent of autistic children in a trial. Sounds impressive, except that 34 percent of those taking the placebo also improved.  (LA Times)

HPV Protection Gardasil, the vaccine which prevents against several strains of the Human papilloma virus, is effective in women ages 25-45. The vaccine, which is currently FDA approved for women 26 and under, seems to protect against the strain of HPV that can cause genital warts in older women, if those women had never been previously infected. In a test of almost 4,000 women, Colombian researchers found the vaccine to be 90 percent effective (MSNBC)

The Procrastinator's Dilemma: Michael Pollin, author of The Ominvore's Dilemma (Penguin, 2006) talks about farming for 94 minutes. But it's a really smart, interesting talk about farming, sustainability, and the food we eat.  (Mercola.com)

Say what? Consumer Reports has a much shorter and very helpful video on how to insert earplugs (just in time for NEWSWEEK's move to our new, more open office!)The highlights: roll plugs into a cylinder until it's long and narrow. Reaching over your head, grab the top of your ear with your opposite hand and pull up. Once inserted, plug will expand to fit your ears. (Consumerist)

Kevin Summers/Getty Images

Could the plummeting economy be contributing to expanding waistlines? Something is: new data released exclusively to NEWSWEEK from Gallup-Healthways shows that in the past year, the number of Americans considered obese has jumped by 1.7 percent—or almost 5.5 million people—and that the obese report a much lower quality of life than those who are at healthier weights.

As part of their larger Well-Being Index, Gallup pollsters began surveying 1,000 Americans a day in an attempt to create a comprehensive index able to track the daily, monthly and yearly shifts in American life. As a result, they now have more than 460,000 completed surveys offering a unique perspective on trends in the health and happiness of America. Several of the questions on the poll have to do with weight and the data from Gallup indicates that the number of individuals who have a Body Mass Index over 30 and are thereby classified as "obese," has risen from 25.1 percent of the population surveyed to 26.8 percent between the first quarter of this year and last. (BMI is the ratio of height to weight.)

Even the most hidebound male chauvinists have been forced to admit that girls are as good at math as boys, on average. Boys no longer start outperforming girls at age 12 or 13, as they did as late as the 1970s; in the U.S., high school girls now take calculus at the same rate as boys;  tests mandated by No Child Left Behind show that girls have reached parity with boys in math achievement through high school; and tests of complex problem-solving (which NCLB doesn’t measure) find that girls have now pulled even with boys through 12th grade on this skill, too.

But the stereotype that females lack the innate ability to match males at the highest levels of math lives on. A new study comes as close to burying it as anything yet.

In a paper posted this evening in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe analyzing data on the highest level of math achievement. These problems are not multiplication calculations, not even second derivatives; they’re more like calculating the necessary relationship between N and epsilon for a uniform continuity proof. There are certainly hints that more males than females have what it takes to excel at math, “and there is an ingrained belief among very well-educated people that [the idea of superior math achievement among males] is true,” says Janet Mertz, professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison . In the U.S., men earn 70 percent of the Ph.D.s in the mathematical sciences, though that’s down from a high of 95 percent in the 1950s. No female has ever won the Fields Medal, math’s Nobel Prize. A study of mathematically precocious young people finds that boys outnumbered girls 2.8-to-1 in 2005, though that was down from 13-to-1 a quarter-century before, UW psychology professor Janet Hyde and Mertz report in PNAS.

“On average, girls have reached parity with boys in the United States and some other countries, and the gender gap at the high end is closing,” says Hyde.

The question, then, is what accounts for the disparity in math geniuses. Here, international data are crucial. In the U.S., tests typically show that, among students scoring in the 99th percentile for math achievement, boys outnumber girls 2-to-1. But that’s only among white students. Among Asians in the U.S., girls outnumber boys very slightly, as they do in Britain, Iceland and Thailand. That suggests that males’ superior math ability does not hold true across the world, which is always a strong clue that social and cultural forces are involved.

“We concluded that the main  reason many fewer females than males excel in math in most countries is not lack of innate ability or ‘intrinsic aptitude’ but gender inequality,” says Mertz. “Nations with greater gender equality typically have a smaller math gender gap.” (Gender equality, as measured by economists, reflects the number of women holding political office, the difference in men’s and women’s pay and the like, and is calculated by the World Economic Forum. The U.S. currently ranks 31st, with northern and western Europe dominating the top spots.) That suggests that the root of gender disparity in math is sociocultural factors, not anything unchangeable that girls are born with. Society either sends a message that girls can excel at math, that they will be rewarded for doing so—or it doesn’t.

Gender equality also comes into play with what’s called the “greater male variability hypothesis.”  This is the idea that then-Harvard president, and now White House advisor, Larry Summers was referring to in the infamous 2005 speech in which he posited that the dearth of women among Ivy League math departments and other top echelons of the field reflected a lack of “intrinsic aptitude” and, in addition, “the variability of aptitude.” The last is a technical term for the idea that there are a greater number of males who are math dunces—but also a greater number who are math geniuses, while girls are clumped in the muddling middle.

Mertz and Hyde looked for evidence of this imbalance—more boys than girls at the extremes of math ability—in international data, too. Again, they found that in some countries as many girls as boys score above the 99th percentile, and in others more girls than boys are extreme math dunces or math geniuses. In both cases, countries with as many or more girls at the upper extreme tend to be those with the greatest gender equality, such as Germany and the Netherlands. If the greater male variability in math performance that Summers cited as an explanation for the low numbers of women among math geniuses is not ubiquitous across the world, then “the occurrence of greater male variability and scarcity of top-scoring females in many, but not all countries .. . must be largely due to changeable sociocultural factors,” the scientists write, “not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes.” If the differences were innate, they should show up in every culture.

For anyone who still believes that innate factors explain the math gender gap, as I wrote last year, look at countries with a common gene pool. East Germany regularly sent many more girls than West Germany to the International Mathematics Olympiad by margins of 5-to-0; Slovakia sent more girls by a margin of 3-to-1; Korea topped Japan by 6 to 0. As I wrote then, “It’s hard to see that as anything but the result of the starkly different social and other environmental forces in each country, not intrinsic biology.”

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But for abortion providers, his death may have been less a shock and more a reminder of the grave risks they face everyday. "We’re sitting ducks," says Susan Wicklund, an abortion provider who runs a clinic near Bozeman, Mont. and has been in the field for over 20 years. "We have to accept that if somebody is absolutely intent on targeting us, they will be successful." In her 2007 memoir, "This Common Secret," (PublicAffairs) Wicklund wrote about the harassment and stalking she’s faced over the years: Wicklund varies her daily routines to make herself less of a target; her clinic is regularly subject to protesters and she sometimes wears a bulletproof vest to her work.

Tiller’s death, Wicklund says, exacerbates the challenges that she and her colleagues face in making abortion safe and accessible to all women. His murder may deter doctors from entering a relatively dangerous field that’s already struggling with a dearth of providers. 87 percent of counties do not have an abortion provider, according to a 2008 study by the Guttmacher Institute. That same study found the number of abortion providers to have dropped slightly, 2 percent, between 2000 and 2005. At her clinic in Montana, Wicklund sees patients who drive hundreds of miles from South Dakota, which has one abortion provider, and Wyoming, which has two. There’s also been an rise in laws that restrict access to abortion, like 24-hour waiting periods and required ultrasounds. But what seems to trouble Wicklund the lack of a strong activist movement dedicated to defending abortion rights. "We have how many millions of women that have chosen to have abortions," she says. "They have come to us and we have taken care of them. We need their voices."

NEWSWEEK’s Sarah Kliff spoke with Wicklund about her reaction to Tiller’s death, what his murder means for abortion providers and why the accessability of reproductive healthcare is falling in the United States. Excerpts:

What does George Tiller’s death mean for abortion providers across the country?  Wicklund: It's all I’ve been thinking about since an hour after he was murdered. I’ve waded through hundreds of emails, conference calls, talking to my family trying to reassure them that I’m okay and, yes, this is the right thing for me to keep doing. I vacillate—all of us do, all of us providers -- between terrible sadness and anger and fear and confusion and back to the terrible sadness. All of us have to wonder which of us will be the next target. How could you not think of that?

Are there any points in your career where the harassment and threats that you received have made you think about leaving the profession? There certainly have been times where I have to sit back and rethink my life course. But all it takes is one day back in the clinic and seeing patients and hearing the stories and understanding how important the work is that I’m able to continue.

How does a murder like this impact the availability of abortion? Do medical students still want to enter a relatively dangerous field? If you’re a young graduate coming out of medical school, got a young family, are you going to want to go into a profession that’s marginalized or ostracized and colleagues don’t stand beside you? If every physician, every family practice doctor who has been trained to do abortions or would consider being trained, if they just took care of their own patients...this would go away if abortion was just part of routine healthcare. Reproductive health is an issue for every sexually-active woman of child bearing age.

Do you think women get intimidated by violence like this and decide not to have abortions? Women are not intimidated. Some of the laws work, some of the forced restrictions, but things like this don’t stop women. It might scare her, she may come in frightened by what she’s seen and heard, but she’s still going to come inside.

In February you opened a clinic in Montana, close to the clinic you’d run there in the mid-1990s. What have the protests been like so far? Are they different than when your clinic was open in the 1990s? They’re much more aggressive with approaching patients coming into the clinic. There’s one protester I know of in Livingston, Mont. who has been stopped a couple a couple times because she’s been accosting 11 and 12 year olds, showing them terrible pictures and telling horrible lies. That kind of behavior I’ve seen more. There’s also more of a tolerance for this kind of behavior that wasn’t there so much before. I think because of millions spent by anti-abortion movement to define this as something bad and shameful, there’s more tolerance of the protests.

Why do you think that’s changed? What’s different about 2009 that makes the protest of abortion more acceptable? I think it’s because of all the money pro-life organizations spent to keep women who have abortions silent and tell them they’re murders. They’ve been very effective at doing that. We have let somebody else define who they are even though the women who choose abortion are moral, good women. But another faction that’s small but powerful is keeping them quiet. We abortion providers also have to take some responsibility. For years we’ve told women, you are not being bad, this is a moral decision, and you should not be ashamed. We mean it, but at the same time we are saying, "...but we will keep your secret." We don’t talk enough about how many abortions we do. But the reality is we all need to speak out. Almost every person, a husband, boyfriend, son, daughter or mother has been touched by abortion. 98 percent would say it’s been a positive, life-saving way. Why do we let this small percentage dictate what we think about what we do?

Is there a way for abortion providers and pro-choice activists to change the climate, to make abortion more acceptable to discuss openly?

We need to mobilize the huge population who has sought out our services. We need women to stand beside us. We need them to speak in the face of protests and say ‘we need this.’ We need to be more open about how often our services are sought out. And we need to be open about the fact that, For many women, it is a very straightforward freeing decision that gives her life back.

Do you think younger women, who were born after Roe v. Wade, are going to stand up and do that? Some have made the argument that the younger generation isn’t as passionate about defending legal abortion.

I think you’re right, that they don’t understand. I know they don’t understand what the stakes really are. They’ve never had to drive to Mexico with their college roommate and then be there while they bleed to death. They’ve never seen a ward full of women, coming out of a doctor’s office sterile. Women do not stop having abortion when it’s illegal.

Do you see any indications that Tiller’s death could mobilize the pro-choice movement to action?

I got two emails this morning from residents who said enough is enough; I am going to learn to do abortions. I know that’s not always the case that, in the bigger picture, it’s going to discourage others from doing abortions. But there are a few, the Dr. Tillers who will dig in their heels and say, "They cannot dictate what I’m going to do for medicine and who I will see."