Talk:Barbara Seaman

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1st section[edit]

Can we get sources for:

Through persistent investigative journalism, reporting, and social organizing, she has brought about significant changes in the relationship between the medical and pharmaceutical establishments and women in America.

As an activist, she introduced the concepts of informed consent, full disclosure, and sexism in healthcare, provoked a US Senate hearing, established the National Women’s Health Network, and authored a number of critical books and articles – some of which caused her to be fired, blacklisted, or censored.

She received her BA and LHD from Oberlin College as a Ford Foundation scholar, plus a certificate in advanced science writing as a Sloan-Rockefeller fellow from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

In 1969 she completed her first book, The Doctors’ Case Against the Pill, which led to a US Senate hearing on the safety of the oral contraceptive, and which made an enormous impression on the millions of women who took the pill each day– as well as the doctors who had prescribed it – despite a detrimental lack of information concerning its safety.

In 2000, Seaman was named by the US Postal Service as an honoree of the 1970s Women’s Right Movement stamp.

Seaman has been a critical part of many women’s, health, Jewish, and aging women’s organizations, and she continues to advocate and mentor younger generations of activists.

This is just a start...I left the sources on the main page...can we get specific FOOTNOTES for each of the above "claims" Once they are properly sourced we can add them back in. Maybe this article can be better than the Jacqueline Susann article which is a disaster....Thanks --Tom 14:16, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Tom, here are some sources:

"FEMINISTS WHO CHANGED AMERICA 1963-1975" edited by Barbara J. Love, University of Illinois Press, in its bio of Seaman, states: "Seaman... has persistently challenged the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies by exposing their drive for profit at the expense of women. Seaman, whose work has expanded the boundaries of full disclosure and informed consent in many aspects of healthcare, was cited by the Library of Congress in 1973 as the author who raised sexism in healthcare as a worldwide issue."

"ON THE PILL; A SOCIAL HISTORY OF ORAL CONTRACEPTIVES FROM 1950-1970," Dr. Elizabeth Siegel Watkins' doctoral thesis in the history of science (Harvard University), published 1998 by John Hopkins Press, p. 106, states: "Thus when a book describing the hazards of a drug taken by millions of women each day landed on his desk, the Senator [Nelson] sat up and took notice. He and the staff economist for the Senate Committee on Small business, Ben Gorden, interviewed Barbara Seaman several times during the fall of 1969.... Seaman passed the test and on December 22nd 1969, Nelson released a statement to the press announcing his intention to hold public hearings on the oral contraceptives."

In the 25th anniversary edition of The Doctor's Case Against the Pill, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote on the front cover: "In 1969, Barbara Seaman proved that women can talk back to doctors -- calmly, rationally, and scientifically. For many of us, women's liberation began at that moment, with the first publication of The Doctor's Case Against the Pill."

Nadine Brozan in the The New York Times, August 20 1994, quotes Blanche Wiesen Cook: "Barbara Seaman triggered a revolution, fostering a willingness among women to take issues of health into their own hands." -- http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9E02EFD71739F933A1575BC0A962958260

With regards to Seaman's blacklistings from various magazines, Charles Mann's cover story in Science Magazine, August 11 1995, "Women's Health Research Blossoms" discusses Barbara Seaman's role in the 1970 hearings on the birth control pill in the US senate: "By the early 1960s... [Seaman] was a health columnist for magazines such as Brides and Ladies' Home Journal. When readers deluged Seaman with questions about birth-control pills, she began an investigation that culminated in The Doctors' Case against the Pill, a 1969 expose claiming that the pill caused fatal strokes, heart disease, diabetes, depression, and a host of other ailments.... Seaman's outrage... led her to a crusade as medical muckraker that would eventually put her in the forefront of the women's health movement.... The ensuing controversy cost Seaman her magazine jobs."

The blacklistings are also discussed at length in a recent article in Linda K. Nathan's October 6 2004 article in The Jewish Week:

"How then could her accomplishments in research and reporting lead to dismissals from these national publications — Ladies Home Journal, Family Circle, and Hadassah magazine?

“After my first hormone book, the drug companies were after me,” Seaman explains. And they wanted her axed. At that time, from 1965-69, she was a columnist and contributing editor at Ladies Home Journal, a magazine that received major advertising from Johnson & Johnson baby products. The company’s Ortho division, however, was also a leader in the manufacture of birth control pills.

Several years later in 1972, Seaman continues, “ I was a contributing editor at Family Circle when ‘Free and Female’ came out,” attacking the idea that “hormones don’t make you feminine forever. But what I didn’t know was that American Home Products, which made the hormone Premarin, also made E-Z Off Oven Cleaner and Preparation H for hemorrhoids,” consumer products that advertised in Family Circle. Case closed. Seaman was booted out."

from the same article also:

"At Hadassah magazine, where Seaman penned a popular health column from 2000-2003, she was told... to stop writing about hormones, even though the subject clearly resonated with female readers. Nonetheless Seaman wrote two more hormone columns; then she was dismissed. (The magazine contended that her column was always late -- although it was never too late to be published, Seaman countered.)

Why would Hadassah magazine really want Seaman out of the way? Hadassah, the organization, has a women's health division that "receives money from Eli Lily," the drug maker, Seaman explains. And "The Greatest Experiment" had criticized Eli Lilly for suppressing information on the harmful effects of DES. Hadassah officials confirm that the division did get money from Eli Lilly but deny that the funding had anything to do with Seaman's firing."

http://www.thejewishweek.com/bottom/specialcontent.php3?artid=815

Carolyn Maloney, in the Congressional Record Oct 17 2005, states: "In the 1980s Barbara was essentially blacklisted from magazines by pharmaceutical companies who would not advertise in publications that carried her stories. Her relentless insistence on questioning the safety and effectiveness of their products earned her their condemnation and our praise. Barbara took advantage of this forced lull by turning to biography."

The 62nd edition / 2008 Who's Who in America records Seaman's educational background: "..... BA (Ford Found. scholar), Oberlin Coll., 1956, LHD (hon.) 1978; cert. in advanced sci. writing (Sloan-Rockefeller fellow), Columbia U., 1968"

Tphyahoo 19:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

pete seeger, parent's met at a picnic[edit]

Barbara Seaman said she would work on tracking down a source for this. (Thomas Hartman.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tphyahoo (talk • contribs) 20:53, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"ford foundation"[edit]

...1. i don't see where in the article it says she was a ford foundation scholar? 2. footnote #1 (hyperion books, author bio) states that she co-founded the national women's health network). Cindery 17:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

footnote #3[edit]

states: "The Doctors' Case Against the Pill became the source of widespread controversy. As a result of drug industry pressure, Seaman was fired from her columnist positions. Although prescription drugs were not yet advertised in the mass media, many drug companies with interests in the pill had over-the-counter divisions that used their advertising clout to have Seaman removed as a columnist." Cindery 17:42, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article in need of serious help[edit]

Maybe its time to wipe this article clean and start from scratch?? It would seem with all these accomplishments, this lady deserves a better bio? The formatting, section breaks, ect is bad. The article is all over the place and the sourcing is questionable. I hate to do it, but maybe I should do this myself? Anyways, --Tom 16:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to work on it here User:Threeafterthree/newsubpage/sandbox

Cruft[edit]

on being a hub: * Suzanne Braun Levine's Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood (New York: Viking, 2005):

"We owe any mastery we have achieved over our own health management to the efforts of Seaman and her sisters-in-arms. The strategy was established early on: Energize a grassroots constituency that lacked a voice; create coalitions from smaller autonomous groups (mobilized around particular conditions, or the needs of a particular demographic group, or local issues); share strategies, contracts, and information through informal but efficient networks; and form alliances with sympathetic sources on the inside of government, industry and the profession. And there was one more thing.

'We made it is rule to take no money from those who might expect their pound of flesh in return Seaman remembers. 'Otherwise Grassroots turns into Astroturf.'

"Although our medical problems are not yet getting the attention they deserve, women's health interests are now on the public agenda. They are there, because women whose medical needs have been neglected are demanding attention, because women's health has become a field with a body of information that professionals have to be aware of, and because women consumers have become active participants in their own care. Today there remain urgent societal problems in need of a movement. One of them strikes particularly close to home. (needs to be shortened)

COI[edit]

Just a heads up, see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#National Women.27s Health Network. KnightLago (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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