The XX Factor : health

A Woman Speaks Up for Injured NFL Players

Samantha Henig — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:34:00 GMT

A post from DoubleX writer Meredith Simons : Congressional committee hearings are usually the domain of dark-suited men speaking in carefully-modulated tones. So Gay Culverhouse , who showed up to a House Judiciary Committee meeting in an unapologetically...(read more)

The Pill Could Do You Wrong In Many Ways

Samantha Henig — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:34:00 GMT

If the blood clots and stroke risks don’t scare you off the pill , maybe this will: Women taking oral contraceptives are less attractive to the opposite sex and less likely to pick a good mate, according to a roundup of studies on the pill , published...(read more)

Why Can't Doctors Admit it When They Don't Have an Answer?

Emily Yoffe — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:17:00 GMT

How sad that Summer Stiers , the young woman suffering from an as-yet uncategorized illness who was profiled so heart-breakingly by Robin Marantz Henig in the New York Times Magazine , has died. At least she ended up at the National Institutes of Health...(read more)

Why Did Summer Stiers Die?

Emily Bazelon — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:22:00 GMT

A guest post from Robin Marantz Henig, a contributor for the New York Times Magazine (and Sam's mom!): The death two weeks ago of Summer Stiers, a young woman I met last year and wrote about at length for the New York Times Magazine , made me think about...(read more)

If Boys Had Girl Parts

Susannah Breslin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:52:00 GMT

Generally, I try to avoid advertiser-created viral videos like the plague. Created by corporations, they tend to make me feel duped into watching them, whether they're any good or not. But I found a new series of viral videos by Tampax to be unusually...(read more)

Celebrity Health Advice on Oprah Not Always Sound Science. No Duh.

Jessica Grose — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:25:00 GMT

Newsweek has an article out debunking much of the health advice shilled by celebrities on the Oprah Winfrey Show . Most famously, Jenny McCarthy has been on Oprah several times claiming that vaccines caused her son's autism (the vaccine/autism link has...(read more)

A Blog Worth Reading

Susannah Breslin — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:46:00 GMT

If you're interested in adding another woman-authored blog to your list, I recommend Sarah Scott's Mayday Productions . A former Martha Stewart employee , Scott ended up "tits-up in a ditch," as she put it to me once in a line borrowed from the title...(read more)