Some mid-week links, mostly health-related
HRT: Survey after survey has linked hormone replacement therapy to cancer, strokes, blood clots and heart disease. Why, then, are so many women so relaxed about using it? And why do some doctors insist that the dangers are exaggerated? Sarah Boseley investigates.
Good article. Though the issue around ageing seems to me a bit underdeveloped: given that more and more women are being horrormongered about manifesting the slightest visual signs of being no longer spring chickens, how far does the desire not to look (shudder) OLD trump any other health concerns? (plus the whole 'it won't happen to me' thing). Also, feel there is an aspect here which is about having one Big Magic Bullet to fire at a constellation of problems (and very few women have more than a select few out of the range of possibilities), rather than thinking in terms of maybe, perhaps, could it not be, dealing with/managing specific symptoms and problems?
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And, for those of you who are not cheered and even the reverse by the advent of summer, summer depression does exist. Not that this article is particularly helpful about doing anything but wringing its hands over the fact that summer SAD is far less recognised than winter SAD, and there's so far even less that can be done about it.
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Zoe Williams is ferocious about the foot-dragging over NHS funding for Gardasil vaccination and the kowtowing to 'nutjobs who would rather see women die than imagine them having sex without consequences'.
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The number of women undergoing fertility treatment in their 40s has increased tenfold in the last 15 years.... In 1991, fewer than 600 women were being treated to help them conceive, but by 2006 the number had risen to 6,000. Not that the figures exactly give cause for optimism, even if the overall success rate has risen (14% in 1991 to 21% in 2004):
a woman aged under 35 who embarks on IVF has a 26% chance of having a healthy baby at her first attempt. The same figure for a woman aged 40 to 42 is 9% and by 44 or older it drops to 1%.
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And a response to this article on the decline in nudism (missed during my absence).