Hard News: A Real Alternative
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But the Springbok protesters were doing something *important*. Not just being all humourless and feminist about ladybits
Danielle is right. This is about gender and all that historic stuff about women and bodies, gendered medicine, power, and who does and doesn't have it, It's why Russell can't really understand Phillida's anger at her doctor.
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Letters to the Listener
Worth reading. Can't help but wonder how many had to be left out for space reasons. A clever editor would have put every damn one online.
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It's why Russell can't really understand Phillida's anger at her doctor
That's unfair. I didn't find her anger hard to understand, I found her characterisation of what took place hard to credit, even bearing in mind the way women were treated in the system at the time.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but the description of a leering, grinning doctor who took actual pleasure in inflicting pain on her was hard to believe.
Honest question, Hilary. What do you make of this passage from the letter to The Listener from Barbara Holt of Breast Cancer Action?
Despite her reputation as an advocate for women, Sandra Coney, in her Sunday Star-Times column in the following years, occasionally campaigned against mammography screening. It seems quite likely National Government politicians used her opposition to mammography screening to delay the start of the national breast screening programme until December 1998.
After the Cartwright Inquiry, many women saw Coney as a cult leader whose word was law. I recall a public meeting where one of Coney’s followers told Skegg that women wanted to perform cervical smears rather than have doctors perform them. He asked them with a gentle smile whether they wanted to perform brain surgery as well.
I recall Coney's campaigning against breast cancer screening: I could never understand it.
Is it not possible that some unsustainable things were said at the time?
And if it's so gendered, why are so many of those on the "other" side educated women?
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A sidelight: mammography is not, in any way, a perfect - or even especially good - way to screen for breast cancer. False positives abound: bigbreasted women like myself find the procedure excruciating (as do very smallbreasted women). Worse: false *negatives* abound (one of my younger sisters died as the result of a follow-up false negative.)
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And if it's so gendered, why are so many of those on the "other" side educated women?
That's perilously close to being on the bingo card, Russell. :)
A system being gendered doesn't mean that all the people on one side are men and the people on the other side are women.
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Isn't it too recent for the history of the so-called Unfortunate Experiment to be contested to the extent you mention, Hilary? When many of the main players are still around and there seem to be some unassailable facts? Surely the core details were correct even if some might say they were wrapped in the feminist thinking of the time.
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The last sentence of Prof. Bryder's response to Prof. Manning's letter to the Listener:
Finally, in my book I discuss in great detail the claim that Green engages in “unethical research” and show that such a case cannot be sustained.
Compare and contrast with the last two sentences from the letter sent by Profs Holloway and Paul:
Having apparently chosen not to talk to anyone who worked for the Committee of Inquiry, and without any legal or medical qualifications, Bryder ventures an opinion that the Inquiry got it wrong. Yet nothing in the Listener article is new, and no new evidence is presented that would alter the conclusions of the judicial Inquiry.
an heroic claim by Prof. Bryder?
no doubt the book reviews will be enlightening... -
Just got the print version.
The "response" from Philllida Bunkle sums up the problem with The Listener's handling of this story. Between Joanne Black's editorialising and Bryder's contributions, Bunkle barely gets a word in. It's a shambles. Both Coney and Bunkle should have been interviewed for the original story.
But Bryder does make an interesting point: she says the expert witness on the Coney/Bunkle side, Ralph Ricard, was quoted in 1981 as saying any woman over 30 who had a positive smear, even if it cleared up, should undergo a hysterectomy. It does seem that the "other" side had its issues too.
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A sidelight: mammography is not, in any way, a perfect - or even especially good - way to screen for breast cancer.
I guess I'm influenced by the fact that a mammogram -- and the careful, sometimes distressing but hugely important process that followed -- has helped ensure that the boys and I will continue to enjoy a life with the most wonderful woman in the world.
Having some direct insight into that process is what makes it so hard to understand Coney's stance on the issue.
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Russell- appreciate the personal viewpoint: one of my much-loved neighbours is also only here because of a mammogram.
My younger sister isnt.
And, 5 of my friends (sigh - it's the age group) and 1 other of my sisters have had false positives (in 3 instances, *multiple* false positives) with consequent biopsies.
Which is why I can quite understand Coney's stance. -
Even if Coney was wrong about mammograms, she was probably right about the Unfortunate Experiment.
I didn't agree with her anti-mammogram stance at the time. When you are diagnosed with an advanced cancer you tend to want everyone to be screened for lots of cancers wherever possible.
It seems that there is more unanimity about CIS and cervical screening than there is about prostate cancer screening and mammograms. Therefore Coney's attitude to mammograms does not undermine the contribution she made to woman's health.
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Cecilia - tautoko.
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Sorry, Russell, I wasn't criticising you. I meant that unless you had had that experience of being powerless because you were a woman, in a medical system, where male (mostly) doctors had power. There really were doctors who abused that power, particularly when women were at their most vulnerable, like childbirth. Women fought for many decades to get power over their childbirths. That's a long story.
And yes gender doesn't mean that other women are necessarily your allies.
Re Barbara Holt's letter - I wondered that too - as they are both staunch feminists. Again, it is for Sandra to tell her side of the story. I vaguely recall it may have been because a friend or family member developed advanced breast cancer because a mammogram had missed it? So mammograms could give woman a false sense of security and there would be less emphasis on ongoing personal surveillance.
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See bit above about false positives (for mammograms) and -worse- false negatives.
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Mammogram technology (and gentleness) has advanced greatly since those days, too.
Medical history is fascinating - never too soon or too far away to debate, discuss or revisit. My mother's generation of childbirth stories is horrific, with women left unattended for hours, without husbands, or support and then compulsorily anaesthetised. And if you were not married, you were beyond the pale. Sonia Davies has a good story of her daughter's war birth in Bread and Roses.
No wonder it was possible for my mother-in-law to have her baby swapped, and no one believe her.
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And with respect to all the personal stories in this thread and in the whole Unfortunate Experiment saga - it goes to show that when you have a personal connection to such a matter of life and death, you really care about the issue.
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That's perilously close to being on the bingo card, Russell. :)
So is telling Russell to take his penis away and be quiet.
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So is telling Russell to take his penis away and be quiet.
For. Fuck's. Sake. It would be really awesome if you could point out exactly where that happened. I'm not holding my breath.
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No wonder it was possible for my mother-in-law to have her baby swapped, and no one believe her.
Fair dinkum? That would be mind- blowing.
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My mother's generation of childbirth stories is horrific, with women left unattended for hours, without husbands, or support and then compulsorily anaesthetised.
I can believe this!
My mother-in-law had her first child in 1949 or 50 (would that be National Womens in Auckland?) and she was struck in the face (hard!) by one of the nurses who told her "You Maoris can't do anything without making a lot of noise can you?" She said she wouldn't have dared to complain about such a thing, you just accepted that in those days.
And many years later a friend was taken to the emergency ward in small town NZ, (this was in 1989) with appendicitis when she was 15.
Despite telling the doctor (repeatedly) that she was a virgin he kept saying "these Maori girls always have untreated venereal disease that turns to pelvic inflammatory disease..." while ramming a speculum in and palpating her cervix, very roughly.
I don't think this girl's impression that the doctor was enjoying both inflicting pain and humiliating her was mistaken. I don't think her interpretation that he was getting pleasure out of repeatedly describing Maori girls as having venereal disease and being promiscuous as mistaken either.
She endured quite a bit of this before he eventually agreed with her self-diagnosis of appendicitis. She wound up in surgery about 6 hours later.
Whether it's couched in racist or sexist terms -are tales of bullying and intimidation that hard to believe?
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Whether it's couched in racist or sexist terms -are tales of bullying and intimidation that hard to believe?
Apparently.
On a much less horrifying scale, I read the archived papers of one of the few doctors to prescribe the Pill to unmarried women in NZ in the 60s. He wrote satirical poetry about the women who came to him complaining about their side effects. Oh yes, ho ho ho. Isn't that moustache-growth amusing? (And this was one of the 'good guys', in many respects.)
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On a much lighter note - but still on the subject of how women were treated in hospitals: my mother, when she first suckled the potiki of the family, complained to the charge nurse that there was something
wrong with the baby. Charge said 'We've checked her and she's a fine beautiful baby." My mother insisted, "She's not sucking properly. ' Charge said, "Of course she is, we've checked, you're just tense." And then sneered, "and you say this is your 6th child? Huh." At which my mother, now irate, said "She is. And look, she's also the first one where my milk is coming straight out her nose."Ooops. They'd missed the partial cleft palate (none of the usual facial deformities...)
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Listener responses to Kim Hill's interview with Charlotte Paul on Saturday Morning have now been posted on this page, under the responses to last week's interview with Linda Bryder.
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Oh yes, ho ho ho. Isn't that moustache-growth amusing?
I didn't know Paul Henry was a doctor!
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