Period 19: on privacy, the definition of water, and multiregionalism
Well my book tour is done, and it was really fun to meet so many readers and future readers of Period. It was also nice to travel again after three years of no flying – though I’m still going to be trying to limit air travel for environmental reasons. I like how anonymous and quiet it can be, and how nice it is to be alone with my thoughts when traveling solo. I managed to finish several books to help me write the next one!
The semester is also now over, grades are in, and my own kids are done too. I’m looking ahead to what I hope will be a long summer of writing. I’m also really excited that next year I have a Center for Advanced Study Fellowship that helps reduce my teaching load, which also gives me more time to write.
Next week I’m taking a Real Live Family Vacation (read: a very different travel experience that will be the opposite of quiet) so am unlikely to put out a newsletter next Friday. I have a double set of links to tide you over this week!
Links
Remember the story of a ten year old rape victim who needed an abortion in Ohio, and how many people refused to believe it was true (from all over the political spectrum, though yes, Republicans were the worst offenders)? Well, now the Indiana medical board has fined the doctor, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who provided the legal abortion for this child. The rebuke goes on her permanent record. It’s a frustrating and gross situation. Technically Dr. Bernard discussed the case to the press in a “deidentified” way by naming only gender, age, and state she was from which is considered appropriate practice. But the medical licensing board contends she violated the patient’s privacy.
There is a bigger conversation to be had here about patient privacy, deidentification, and as author and director of the West Alabama Women’s Center Robin Marty puts it, the weaponization of HIPAA (full thread here). Patient privacy is a sham, with too many providers and insurance companies thinking we deserve less autonomy and privacy than we actually have under the law. And in general our right to privacy is one that is frequently contested, especially if we have a uterus. For instance, there is a long history of pregnant people being drug tested without their consent or knowledge, with a recent case in New Jersey making the news just a few months ago.
Republicans and their allies want to discuss patient privacy when it suits their needs, not patient needs. Which is why broad, sweeping consents, secondary use of data, and more are often deemed quite acceptable in clinical and health research, but this one case of a doctor mentioning the gender and age of a pregnant rape survivor was not. We need stronger privacy measures for patients and for people in general, not ones where lawmakers can cherry pick the times they are or are not ok with disclosure of medical information. In fact, check out this Nature Comment that just posted today about the problems with HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996).Cory Doctorow shared this dystopian (except it’s real life) piece titled The Death of Ownership, about how many of our products now require subscriptions to work, how features are reduced if we use the wrong vendors to have them fixed, and more. As someone who “owns” a Peloton, reMarkable, and several streaming services… I get it. This also connects back to the question of right to privacy, as most of these companies are also using these connections to analyze our user habits to further their own profits (and often are happy to turn user data over to the police). What I appreciate about this piece is that it isn’t just a dystopian narrative riling us up to how bad things are – the author, Nathan Proctor, discusses right-to-repair legislation, and they point to previous bans on problematic credit-card-use agreements that show more is possible. We do not have to accept these futures as inevitable and let companies decide for us what our lives look like. We can advocate for better consumer protections, privacy protections, and more, by talking to our representatives.
I’m sneaking this kind of nerdy one in the middle of my link round-up. I’ve been doing a lot of research for my next book, and the main chapter I am working on right now looks at placental barriers and how they evolved. Did you know that placentas evolved ten or more times? Or at least, mammals’ ability to steal viral DNA from germline infections and co-opt it to improve placental development and/or protections from viruses. (Want a fun primer on this topic? PBS has one here.)
Part of the reason the story of syncytins (the similar viral DNA we and many other mammals stole) has been on my mind has been because of the fact that evidence is continuing to mount for the multiregional hypothesis for human evolution. That is, instead of hominins evolving from a single lineage, there was gene flow happening across lots of lineages.
I’m more into the modern human biological variation part of biological anthropology, so don’t quote me on this, but it’s interesting to me how the evidence keeps stacking up that there are a lot of traits that have evolved many times, and lineages that intermix… rather than a tidy story of a major trait evolving once each time. If you want to read the Nature piece on this it’s here.Last semester, in my Humanizing Science class, we spent a few weeks on US military interest in oceanography (I was sorely tempted to watch The Hunt for Red October with them but ultimately decided against it). The military had a lot of interests in the ocean: they wanted to map it to better chart submarine routes; they wanted to figure out ways to listen to other countries’ intelligence transmissions or be able to figure out where their subs were; they wanted to communicate information quickly themselves. There was also high interest among the military – and among a lot of regular people – in colonizing the ocean. Doing so would allow us to expand our borders and water access rights, control trade routes, and more.
So I was really interested in this story of a professor who has spent 74 days (and counting) underwater, breaking the world record. I thought this fantasy died in the 1960s! But it turns out interest in underwater living (and the engineering/human health implications, which can sometimes be applied to going to space) is ongoing. He should hit 100 days shortly – we’ll see if Prof. Dituri comes up for air by then.The Supreme Court is continuing to make it easier to destroy our planet with their latest decision about wetlands. The AP News story is here, but I also encourage you to read Ariel Wittenberg’s thread on the topic which reveals the ways in which this is a reverberation of the Trump White House. If I understand this ruling correctly, this is not only a major weakening of environmental law but incredibly anti-science. The idea that, in Wittenberg’s words, “Wetlands are only protected if they are SO close to a bigger waterway and are SO wet that it is ‘difficult to determine where the ‘water’ ends and the ‘wetland’ begins.’” (The quote within the quote is from Alito’s decision.) Jay Willis points out additional bananas language: “Some say ‘wetlands’ are ‘waters’ because ‘water’ is ‘wet.’ However, this overlooks the critical distinction between ‘water’ and ‘waters.’” Even law professor Richard J. Lazarus points out that this is a ridiculous, ascientific, and ahistorical approach to a ruling.
Listen, scientists have standards and thresholds for things… and I’m pretty sure it’s not “this is, like, so wet.” There are MANY ways to address misinformation, disinformation, and the erosion of truth. I happen to think an especially powerful one could be coming from scientists themselves continuing to put out accurate information to counteract the made-up way conservatives talk about the world.
It's also worth noticing (hat tip Rebecca Solnit, who shared this on Twitter) that one of the plaintiffs in this case was convicted of “attempting to purchase sex with a twelve-year-old child.”
AND SOMEHOW WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE. What the hell.Which is why I’m going to end on this opinion piece from a few weeks ago at The Hill, “It’s time to combine the fights for climate change and reproductive justice.” While this is only the most recent of several calls to consider these issues together, it’s a good introduction to those of you who might be newer to these ideas. If you haven’t already or are a newer subscriber, you might also be interested in these pieces I’ve written on the topic: in American Scientist I discuss the environmental pollutants and endocrine disrupting chemicals phthalates and their implications for menstrual health; in a previous newsletter I’ve covered how pollution affects ovarian reserve; and in the final chapter of my book Period: The Real Story of Menstruation I discuss the ways that climate, disability, and reproductive justice can and should operate together (a free excerpt that covers some of this is available at WIRED).
Weird period fact: Estrogen does not march steadily into the sea leading up to menopause
Menopause is having a bit of a moment. From a few high profile articles to femtech trying to make money off of middle-aged menstruators, there are a lot of creams, pills, apps, and who knows what else being peddled.
Yet I keep seeing the same misconceptions crop up about perimenopause – the years that lead up to menopause – as well as menopause itself – which can only be defined retroactively after a full year without a menstrual period. This misconception is that estrogen declines through the perimenopausal period.
It doesn’t! At least, not until the bitter end.
In early to mid perimenopause, one of the things the ovaries are doing is throwing everything it can at follicle development to give the body some final tries at conceiving. Slightly lower quality follicles, as well as ovulating two or even three follicles at a time, happen through this period. For this reason estrogen is in fact higher and more variable. It’s only in the final year or two that we see a decline.
So if you’re in your 40s, revel in the fact that you likely have plenty of estrogen (and maybe more follicles than you know what to do with, so don’t forget contraception if you are having potentially conceptive sex and don’t want to get pregnant).
Source: Prior, J. C. (2011). The endocrinology of perimenopause need for a paradigm shift. Frontiers in Bioscience, S3(2), 474–486. https://doi.org/10.2741/s166