i am a crank
Below please find a crank letter. Any suggestions before I send it?
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Dear Women's Health Research Center,
Hi, I wanted to give some feedback about an ad you ran recently in the Portland Mercury, soliciting women to join your study of continuous oral contraceptives/doxycyline.* The ad showed a bunch of young women frolicking and taking group photos, and the text read something like "Are you tired of your period? Join the crowd. Then join our study."
By my reading, this ad contained the following "subtexts":
--menstruation is a problem
--lots of young women hate their periods
--this problem can be treated with continuous oral contraceptives.
It is appropriate that OSHU study continuous oral contraceptives, and also appropriate that the University solicit research subjects for its studies.** However, this ad went beyond those aims. It promoted the idea of menstruation-as-a-problem.
Menstruation is not a pathology. It is a normal event in the bodies of healthy adult women. Promoting the idea of menstruation-as-pathology is beneficial for pharmaceutical companies. I am not convinced that it is beneficial for public health.
Please reconsider your advertising choices.
yours sincerely,
Maria Sputnik
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*AKA, those birth control pills you take for months @ a time ("seasonale") so you only have four periods a year (but maybe have "pulmonary embolism" or liver failure instead).
**OHSU is publicly funded, for what it's worth.