News of the Day

December 23, 2000

December 19, 2000

National Post December 19, 2000

Centre right to reject transsexual, Rebick says Human rights tribunal: Case goes to 'heart of what the women's movement is'

By Ian Bailey

* PHOTO * Chris Bolin, National Post - JUDY REBICK: "The challenge is, 'who is a woman?' "

VANCOUVER - A centre for sex-assault victims was right to reject a transgendered woman as a volunteer, says Judy Rebick, one of Canada's leading feminists.

"The issue at stake is whether a women's group has the right to decide who its members are," she said yesterday in an interview after testifying at a hearing of a British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.

Kimberley Nixon, who has undergone surgery and has been living as a woman for about 20 years, volunteered in 1995 to be a crisis counsellor with the Vancouver Rape Relief Society. A centre co-ordinator asked her to leave.

Ms. Rebick, a former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and a CBC Newsworld host, testified yesterday at the tribunal, which was ordered to deal with Ms. Nixon's complaints about her treatment. Ms. Rebick provided the tribunal with a straightforward account of the history of the women's movement, talking about how lesbians, women of colour and others found their own places within the movement.

Outside the hearing room, however, she was far more outspoken on the problem transgendered women present for the feminist movement: "The challenge is, 'who is a woman?' -- which we're just beginning to deal with," said Ms. Rebick, 55. "What makes this tense is there's no question that transgendered people suffer from discrimination, they suffer a great deal. So, of course, [in] your heart as a feminist you want to be on their side in every fight but you can't be because there is a conflict of rights.

December 16, 2000

December 15, 2000

Panel Puts Estrogen on Cancer List

The Associated Press

Dec 15 2000 10:44AM

WASHINGTON (AP) - A panel of federal scientific advisers says estrogen should be placed on the nation's list of cancer-causing substances, even though it remains a good treatment for many women.

The National Toxicology Program advisory committee voted 8-1 that steroidal estrogen - a type used in post-menopausal treatments and birth control pills - should be listed because of an association with endometrial cancer and, to a lesser extent, breast cancer.

Another type of post-menopausal estrogen, conjugated estrogens, already is on the federal carcinogen list.

Doctors already know about the cancer link. That's the reason post-menopausal estrogen is given together with another hormone called progestin: The combination lowers the risk of endometrial cancer.

But the NTP advisers said putting all estrogens on the federal list would help women trying to balance the benefits and risks when choosing hormone therapy.

``Physicians never discuss any of these risks when they are prescribing hormone therapy. They only discuss benefits. Listing might force it on the table,'' Michelle Medinsky, a toxicologist from Durham, N.C., said before the vote.

The committee of scientists advises the NTP, a branch of the National Institutes of Health that every two years updates the federal list of proven and suspected cancer-causing substances.

The NTP typically follows its advisers' recommendations, but an officially updated carcinogen list isn't expected until 2002.

Thursday, after a daylong debate, the panel declined to add talc powder to the list, saying there wasn't enough evidence linking its use in feminine hygiene products to ovarian cancer. The panel deadlocked over whether to a second type of talc, fibrous talc that some studies have linked to lung cancer in talc miners.

On Wednesday, the panel voted to add ultraviolet radiation - those sunburn-causing rays long known to cause skin cancer - to the official carcinogen list.

The panel on Friday continued debating an association between cancers of the nose and sinuses with industrial exposure to wood dust.

Talc has long been controversial. When studies first appeared suggesting it migrated into the ovaries to cause tumors, many feminine hygiene products replaced talc with cornstarch.

Panelist Medinsky said she had been prepared to list talc powder as ``reasonably believed to cause cancer.'' But after listening to hours of industry attacks on the science, ``the evidence has knocked me out of the 'reasonably' category into 'not list,''' she said before the panel voted 7-3 against listing talc.

Talc in one form or the other can be found in many papers, paints, ceramics, food wrappers, hard candy, chewing gum, cosmetics and pills. Most people are familiar with talc as a loose powder used in cosmetics and as a drying powder.

Industry officials also attacked studies that showed increased lung cancer in talc miners in New York State and questioned an experiment that showed that rats breathing high concentrations of talc got lung cancer.

Higher lung-cancer rates in talc miners may have resulted from their smoking or from the presence of radon gas in the mines or asbestos in soils nearby, industry officials said.

The scientific advisers then deadlocked on whether this second type of talc, fibrous talc, caused lung cancer, voting 5-5 on adding it to the carcinogen list.

UV light, however, was a no-brainer for the panel, which voted unanimously that it was a known human carcinogen.

UV radiation is not visible, but it is felt as heat and can damage the eyes and skin. It comes in three forms, ranging from the relatively long-wavelength UVA to the shortest wavelength UVC. UVA accounts for most of the solar UV radiation because it is not absorbed by the atmosphere. UVB is mostly absorbed by the ozone layer and UVC is totally absorbed.

All three are produced by mercury arc sun lamps, while other lamps that simulate sunlight produce primarily UVA.

December 14, 2000

Mel Gibson in Pantyhose.

December 13, 2000

December 7, 2000