Posts Tagged Science

By Chloe Angyal • 13 years ago

Quick hit: Carl Sagan on why excluding women is a bad idea

From Letters of Note comes this missive on why excluding women from scientific organizations benefits no one, written by scientist Carl Sagan in 1981. Sagan was a member of The Explorers Club, an international society devoted to scientific exploration. Founded in 1904, the club still had not begun admitting women by the 1980s. Sagan penned a letter to the membership arguing that excluding women was not in the club’s interest, even if it was a tradition:

When our organization was formed in 1905, men were preventing women from voting and from pursuing many occupations for which they are clearly suited. In the popular mind, exploration was not what women did. Even so, women had played a significant but unheralded role ...

From Letters of Note comes this missive on why excluding women from scientific organizations benefits no one, written by scientist Carl Sagan in 1981. Sagan was a member of The Explorers Club, an international society devoted ...
By Jos Truitt • 13 years ago

Birth control not really causing gender dysphoria in fish

You may have been told your birth control pills are leading to high levels of estrogen pollution in our water supply. The American Life League has built a campaign to stop women from taking birth control by arguing that it has detrimental environmental impacts. The campaign plays to fears about the decline of masculinity, except this time we’re talking about unacceptably feminine fish.

According to a study from UC San Francisco, only a small fraction (less than 1%) of estrogen pollution is actually caused by birth control pills. Our farming system is a much much bigger culprit. But of course we jump to blame women taking care of their own reproductive health instead of a huge industry.

Estrogen pollution ...

You may have been told your birth control pills are leading to high levels of estrogen pollution in our water supply. The American Life League has built a campaign to stop women from taking birth control ...
By Courtney • 13 years ago

HIV-reducing vaginal microbicide stalled without funding

It’s one thing when we don’t know how to solve some of the world’s most difficult problems, like HIV and AIDS infection rates. It’s another when we actually have a realistic solution (or one of many), and we simply can’t figure out how to allocate resources to fund it. Reading that money is the only thing standing between women all over the world and a new vaginal microbicide that significantly reduces HIV infection made me so frickin’ angry. Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times piece this weekend:

Donors have not committed enough money for even one of the two studies needed to confirm a promising South African trial of the microbicide and get it into women’s hands. Only ...

It’s one thing when we don’t know how to solve some of the world’s most difficult problems, like HIV and AIDS infection rates. It’s another when we actually have a realistic solution (or one of many), and ...
By Courtney • 13 years ago

Not Oprah’s Book Club: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Pic via the Grio

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that Rebecca Skloot’s amazing book, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, is on the bestsellers list, and has been for weeks. In it, Skloot gives us one of the most captivating and in-depth investigations into the intersections of race, science, and health that has ever been written.

Henrietta Lacks, a poor Southern tobacco farmer, came down with a nasty case of cervical cancer in the early 50s. As she was getting treated at the “colored” ward at John Hopkins, the doctor took a sample from her cervix without her consent–as was the practice at the time. That one little sample would prove to ...

Pic via the Grio

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that Rebecca Skloot’s amazing book, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, is on the bestsellers list, and has been ...
By Courtney • 13 years ago

Nalini Nadkarni: Life science in prison

Nalini Nadkarni, “the queen of canopy research,” questions what we think of as static and what we think of as movement. She invites us all to explore unlikely intersections in our continued social justice movements. I’m sold.

Nalini Nadkarni, “the queen of canopy research,” questions what we think of as static and what we think of as movement. She invites us all to explore unlikely intersections in our continued social justice movements. I’m sold.
By Courtney • 13 years ago

Nalini Nadkarni: Life science in prison

Nalini Nadkarni, “the queen of canopy research,” questions what we think of as static and what we think of as movement. She invites us all to explore unlikely intersections in our continued social justice movements. I’m sold.

Nalini Nadkarni, “the queen of canopy research,” questions what we think of as static and what we think of as movement. She invites us all to explore unlikely intersections in our continued social justice movements. I’m sold.

Microbicide
By Lori Adelman • 13 years ago

Win for Women’s Health: New Gel Significantly Cuts Risk of HIV and Herpes Transmission!

In a huge win for women’s health, a new study published today found that a gel applied by women before and after sex slashed the chance of acquiring the AIDS virus by 39% and the genital herpes virus by 51%.

From Akimbo, the blog of the International Women’s Health Coalition:

The Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) has announced that a microbicide it has been testing has shown to be 39% effective in prevention the transmission of HIV to female receptive partners. The microbicide gel contains the drug tenofovir, an antiretroviral drug used widely in the treatment of HIV, and is designed to be used vaginally both before and after penile-vaginal penetration.

Woh. This is ...

In a huge win for women’s health, a new study published today found that a gel applied by women before and after sex slashed the chance of acquiring the AIDS virus by 39% and the genital ...
By Courtney • 13 years ago

Pink balls? Seriously?


For a long time, I thought blue balls was something that dudes made up in 7th grade in order to get further around the bases than their girlfriends were comfortable with traveling. Turns out, the phenomenon is real and technically called vasoconstriction. But it’s not just the guys who have trouble with, in the words of my old friend Carly Simon, anticipation. This just in from The Frisky:

Medical science has proven that women get a similar painful feeling when we don’t get to finish properly either. There is nothing worse then being close to climaxing and losing it; just because we don’t physically ejaculate (well, much) doesn’t mean we don’t get pink balls.

Stupid name, I know. But ...


For a long time, I thought blue balls was something that dudes made up in 7th grade in order to get further around the bases than their girlfriends were comfortable with traveling. Turns out, the phenomenon ...

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