Outrageous Practices: How Gender Bias Threatens Women's Health

I work in medicine. Even in 2006 many of the issues in the book still ring true. NIH research grants now include a form that must be filled out that has an 'inclusion of women and minorities' clause and the IRB requires that data be seperated and analyzed by gender and race. This is a step forward, as far as actually seeing women doing the research, I can look around the research labs here and see only 'token' women in the labs. Low level 'Jr. Scientists', In my division we have 7 male professors, 4 male associate professors, 6 male assistant professors. All of these men are white and all are tenure track. We have 4 females. 3 are assistant professors- the lowest tenure track position you can have, they have not been promoted since I have been here while I have watched 3 of the men move up. The other female is leveled at 'instructor' (non-tenure track) having more research grants and publications than one of the men who is sitting at an associate professor position. I've watched backhanded comments based on both sex and race towards lab members. Are things still wrong? In research- yes. In my experience in the clinic... If I don't like a doctor, I can them. I've had to can only one doctor, so I can't judge appropriately. This book should be an eye opener to the wrongs of medicine towards women. I hope a second book is made based on BOTH women and minorities.

I'm somewhat mystified at the negative comments by the other reviewers. I read this book in 1994 when it first came out, and it really opened my eyes to the inequities of the medical system and showed me the truth of my own experiences - I've encountered several male doctors who tend to dismiss my own observations of my body or my health as irrelevant or suspect, simply because I'm female. I even had one doctor get angry with me for researching mononucleosis when he diagnosed me with it in college! You would think he would be pleased that I was taking charge of my health and wanted to learn more about my problem, but he seemed to find this threatening. While I agree that race and sexual orientation are also vital factors, I don't think this book meant to focus on them, so criticizing it for not doing so is unfair. I do not claim any special knowledge re. chronic fatigue syndrome, but I can say that when the book was originally written in 1994, and even during the time period of this second edition in 1997, much less was known about CFS than is known now. It's possible they were making judgments based on research at that time or at the time of editing. The bottom line for me is that this is a great book. If I had a daughter in high school, I'd hand this to her as required reading. While funding for women's medical problems such as breast cancer has increased, it is still far from equal. I'd love to see an update to this book - perhaps with chapters that do focus on the issues raised by other reviewers.

With respect to the other reviewers of this book, I find Outrageous Practices to be an excellent introduction to women's health issues as they relate to the larger society. I would like to emphasize the word "introduction", as someone who is well-read in these issues would find this book repetitive and without a great deal of depth.I do agree with other criticisms that the book often repeats facts and statistics. I think the sometimes flippant and critical tone of the writing leads some readers to feel that the book is biased and "one-sided". It certainly would have been stronger writing if the authors had left their personal interpretations out of the text and let the facts speak for themselves, because the facts are just that - proof of a tremendous bias in society that continually affects women's health on a day to day basis.Having used this book as a textbook in a college course on women's health, I found it to be an excellent source when combined with other books and articles, usually those concentrating on the history of a given issue. The history aspect is crucial - and by concentrating on scientists and government statistics for their work, Laurence and Weinhouse often leave the reader bewildered as to how our society got to a place where women's health is ignored or endangered by cultural attitudes. This book helps get women angry at their treatment by the medical profession and that often is the first step to understanding and exploring other issues in women's studies. My thanks to the authors.