Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Gender, Germs, And Dirt: A Case Study Of Properly Politicised Science, Sharyn Clough

XIV IAPh Symposium 2010

This presentation is part of the Feminist Perspectives in the Sciences: Epidemiology track.

The relatively recent increase in cases of allergies and asthma, especially in industrialised nations of the north and west, has been explained by the “hygiene hypothesis”—viz., that increased cleanliness and sanitation have unintended negative consequences for immune health—an hypothesis that has received robust epidemiological support (e.g., Platts-Mills 2002). Over the last few years, support for the hypothesis has increased with the discovery that populations regularly exposed to certain parasitic worms (helminths) have very low incidence of chronic inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s (Elliot, Summers, and Weinstock 2007). …

Harm Or Mere Inconvenience? Denying Women Emergency Contraception, Carolyn Mcleod

Philosophy Publications

This paper addresses the likely impact on women of being denied emergency contraception (EC) by pharmacists who conscientiously refuse to provide it. A common view—defended by Elizabeth Fenton and Loren Lomasky, among others—is that these refusals inconvenience rather than harm women so long as the women can easily get EC somewhere else nearby. I argue from a feminist perspective that the refusals harm women even when they can easily get EC somewhere else nearby.