The global drive to increase awareness of women’s health is being hijacked by major corporations promoting flawed or ineffective tests, treatments and technology, doctors and public health experts have warned.
Boosting advocacy around female medical conditions is seen as crucial to reverse decades of sex inequalities in healthcare worldwide.
But feminist health narratives are increasingly being co-opted by commercial interests to market products or interventions that are not backed by evidence, said researchers writing in the BMJ.
EPA-EFE
One example cited is a hormone test marketed to women with phrases such as “information is power and lets you take charge of your fertility” — despite clear evidence that the test cannot reliably predict a woman’s chances of conceiving.
The researchers wrote that a surge in marketing risks harming women through inappropriate medicalization, over diagnosis and overtreatment.
They raised concerns about over-simplistic health messages claiming that any knowledge is power, and urged health professionals and governments to ensure that easily understood, balanced information was available based on high quality scientific evidence.
“Women’s health is vital and cannot be allowed to be hijacked by vested interests,” the group of public health researchers, GPs and women’s health advocates wrote.
“Health consumers and clinicians need to be wary of the simplistic narratives that any information and knowledge is always power. We need to ensure the goals of feminist advocacy are not undermined through commercially driven use of feminist discourse pushing non-evidence-based care.”
CORPORARTE MESSAGING
Companies have historically exploited health agendas by co-opting messaging about female autonomy to encourage women’s consumption of unhealthy commodities like tobacco and alcohol, they wrote. But this phenomenon has now expanded across women’s health.
“Importantly, the problem is not with the use of health technologies, tests and treatments per se, as many women benefit greatly and gain improved quality of life from them,” they said.
“The problem lies in the way commercial marketing and advocacy efforts push such interventions to a much larger group of women than is likely to benefit without being explicit about their limitations.”
They cited two examples of how feminist discourse was being hijacked to push non-evidence-based healthcare to healthy women.
The first was the anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) test, which measures levels of AMH in the blood, linked to the number of eggs in a woman’s ovaries.
The test does not reliably predict the chance of conceiving but fertility clinics and online companies globally are marketing it to the general public suggesting as much, the experts warned.
The researchers pointed to examples of feminist rhetoric promoting the AMH test online. “You’re not ovary-acting,” one Web site said. “Understand your hormones and fertility, be the boss of your symptoms and get the expert care you deserve-every step of the way.”
Misleading marketing encouraging women with no signs or symptoms of infertility to seek AMH testing to check their fertility or inform family planning “ultimately undermines empowerment and informed decision making as the evidence to date shows the test is invalid for these purposes,” the researchers wrote.
The second example cited was the view that all women having screening should be notified about their breast density, one of several independent risk factors for breast cancer.
Arguments emphasize women’s “right to know” but the researchers warned that breast density notification was being used to promote additional screening without robust evidence — and without mentioning the lack of evidence — that it prevents breast cancer deaths.
BREAST AWARE
Breast density notification can also increase women’s anxiety, confusion and intention to seek additional screening, while the unreliability of breast density measurement is another concern, they added.
Some have argued that technological advances, more information and increasingly individualized care can still advance women’s knowledge and health even when there is no clear evidence that the benefits outweigh the harms.
But while the researchers said they fully supported stronger patient autonomy, they suggested that marketing for interventions without stating the limitations or unclear evidence of benefit “risks causing more harm than good and therefore may go against the empowerment being sought”.
In conclusion, they say: “We need to ensure the goals of feminist health advocacy are not undermined through commercially driven use of feminist discourse pushing non-evidence based care.”
Sarah Hawkes, a professor of global health at University College London, said that in recent years “a different perspective on women’s health has taken hold” across medicine, namely “women’s health as a source of profit”. She argued that women “should draw on the power of collective action” to hold major corporations promoting non-evidence-based medical tests or treatments to account.
Nov. 11 to Nov. 17 People may call Taipei a “living hell for pedestrians,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were even discouraged from crossing major roads on foot. And there weren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals at busy intersections. A 1978 editorial in the China Times (中國時報) reflected the government’s car-centric attitude: “Pedestrians too often risk their lives to compete with vehicles over road use instead of using an overpass. If they get hit by a car, who can they blame?” Taipei’s car traffic was growing exponentially during the 1960s, and along with it the frequency of accidents. The policy
While Americans face the upcoming second Donald Trump presidency with bright optimism/existential dread in Taiwan there are also varying opinions on what the impact will be here. Regardless of what one thinks of Trump personally and his first administration, US-Taiwan relations blossomed. Relative to the previous Obama administration, arms sales rocketed from US$14 billion during Obama’s eight years to US$18 billion in four years under Trump. High-profile visits by administration officials, bipartisan Congressional delegations, more and higher-level government-to-government direct contacts were all increased under Trump, setting the stage and example for the Biden administration to follow. However, Trump administration secretary
The room glows vibrant pink, the floor flooded with hundreds of tiny pink marbles. As I approach the two chairs and a plush baroque sofa of matching fuchsia, what at first appears to be a scene of domestic bliss reveals itself to be anything but as gnarled metal nails and sharp spikes protrude from the cushions. An eerie cutout of a woman recoils into the armrest. This mixed-media installation captures generations of female anguish in Yun Suknam’s native South Korea, reflecting her observations and lived experience of the subjugated and serviceable housewife. The marbles are the mother’s sweat and tears,
In mid-1949 George Kennan, the famed geopolitical thinker and analyst, wrote a memorandum on US policy towards Taiwan and Penghu, then known as, respectively, Formosa and the Pescadores. In it he argued that Formosa and Pescadores would be lost to the Chine communists in a few years, or even months, because of the deteriorating situation on the islands, defeating the US goal of keeping them out of Communist Chinese hands. Kennan contended that “the only reasonably sure chance of denying Formosa and the Pescadores to the Communists” would be to remove the current Chinese administration, establish a neutral administration and
RSS