Last Sunday, Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman broke ranks with the feminists who have been denouncing CBS for running Tim Tebow's TV ad during the Super Bowl. Read their op-ed in the Washington Post. It's a fascinating history of canny, well-crafted advertising by pro-life groups, and Kissling and Michelman argue that the pro-choice movement has often lagged in response. Tebow's ad, of course, celebrates his mother's decision to give birth to him despite a placental abruption, a premature separation of the placenta from the uterine wall that can be life-threatening for the mother and is often associated with stillbirth. Will Saletan has expertly explained how lucky the Tebows were; Kissling and Michelman's goal is different. They see no use in berating CBS for accepting the ad—as Jess has pointed out, that smacks of censorship. Instead, as the former president of Catholics for Choice and the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, respectively, they can see that the Tebow ad is celebrating one kind of choice, and that pro-choice groups should remind us about why women should be free to make other choices as well. They want a Super Bowl ad of their own, and here's what they dream up:

We'd go with a 30-second spot, too. The camera focuses on one woman after another, posed in the situations of daily life: rushing out the door in the morning for work, flipping through a magazine, washing dishes, teaching a class of sixth-graders, wheeling a baby stroller. Each woman looks calmly into the camera and describes her different and successful choice: having a baby and giving it up for adoption, having an abortion, having a baby and raising it lovingly. Each one being clear that making choices isn't easy, but that life without tough choices doesn't exist.

Planned Parenthood took their advice and posted this ad today on YouTube. It goes for different characters than Kissling and Michelman's, but it's in the same spirit. What do you think—does the ad work? What 30-second spot would you put together to bring to life the benefits of legal abortion? Send your entries to emilyatxx@gmail.com or, better yet, post them in the comments.

Tags: frances kissling; tim tebow, kate michelman, placental abruption, planned parenthood, pro-choice, pro-life, third trimester abortion

An interesting article about the use of nanotechnology—ultra-teensy particles—in cosmetics appears in this week’s New Haven Independent. Journalist Alex Halperin explains that the FDA is not testing the safety or efficacy of nanotech particles despite the fact that there is widespread concern. The lack of credible safety information is especially frustrating when it comes to cosmetics because cosmetics do not undergo safety testing. Nor do cosmetics have to perform as advertised. So what is it women are buying when they buy, to use Halperin’s example, Chantecaille’s 1.7 ounce pots of “Nano Gold Energizing Cream Aromacologie”? What we don’t know can, in fact, hurt us.

Now, ladies and gentlemen—but especially ladies—this article presents an occasion for a helpful reminder: The FDA has zero oversight over cosmetics. However, cosmetic companies are supposed to refrain from promoting unguents that claim to alter the structure or function of any part of our bodies, including skin. Which means cosmetics companies are supposed to refrain from promoting products that prevent or reduce wrinkles, enhance collagen production, lighten skin, etc. According to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, products that make these claims are, by definition, misbranded drugs. If a company wants to market a product that makes a drug claim, it must go through FDA testing for safety and efficacy.

Until the FDA cracks down (as they did in the late 1980s), companies will keep making and marketing scientific-sounding goop—slapped with the label “nano” or “cosmeceutical” or “hypoallergenic” or “allergy free” or “dermatologist tested,” which may or may not be true for ingredients that may or may not actually work.

Until the FDA decides that ladies deserve what is legally their right to know—the safety and efficacy of what we put on (and, as we now know from advances in dermatology and nanotechnology, into) our bodies, it’s best to ignore the words altogether and shop for pretty packaging like our grandmothers did. This way, at least we know what we’re paying for. Despite scientific advances and cosmetic medicine, women are expected to retain an atavistic approach to beauty products: It's all hope in a jar. We must hope that the goop works, and we must hope that it doesn't harm us.

Tags: cosmeceuticals, fda, nanotech, regulation

Newsweek has just weighed in with a cover story ("Antidepressants Don't Work") based on the recent JAMA antidepressant study and previous summary analyses of FDA and drug-company data. Here and elsewhere, I have had my say on this research. Newsweek thinks it shows that for most sorts of depression, antidepressants are no better than placebo; I think that the studies are weak.

But the Newsweek piece goes further. It says that when antidepressants do work (even Newsweek says that they are effective for severe depression), it is not by the means that most scientists have been studying. The prevailing theory is that, whatever they do downstream, the initial effect of antidepressants is through their action on the way that the brain handles neurotransmitters—substances, like serotonin and norepinephrine, that the brain uses for internal communication.

The relevant passage in the Newsweek piece is about an antidepressant, widely available in Europe and Latin America, called tianeptine. Newsweek relies on Irving Kirsch, a psychologist whose research triggered the placebo debate, for interpretation:

And a new drug, tianeptine, which is sold in France and some other countries (but not the U.S.), turns out to be as effective as Prozac-like antidepressants that keep the synapses well supplied with serotonin. The mechanism of the new drug? It lowers brain levels of serotonin. "If depression can be equally affected by drugs that increase serotonin and by drugs that decrease it," says Kirsch, "it's hard to imagine how the benefits can be due to their chemical activity.’”

But tianeptine is hardly new. A fact-checker would have had only to look at the Wiki on tianeptine to see that the drug dates back to the 1980s. Many antidepressants block brain cells’ tendency to re-absorb serotonin—so that the neurotransmitter remains active for a longer time; grossly, tianeptine does the opposite—that is, it enhances serotonin re-uptake. For decades, then, tianeptine was presented as a counterexample to prevailing theories; looking at old files, I see that I discussed tianeptine in public lectures dating back to the mid-1990s. But recent evidence suggests that (much like other antidepressants) tianeptine actually increases serotonin levels regionally—for instance, in an area of the hippocampus thought to be related to mood regulation. And even the prior research, again dating back to the 1990s (it is out of Bruce McEwen's laboratory, a reliable source), found that after 14 days of use, tianeptine alters serotonin transport in the same fashion as yet older antidepressants. More generally, tianeptine’s effects are very much in accord with the current theory of the mechanism of action of other antidepressants, through the induction of neuroresilience in the hippocampus and elsewhere. I reference this evidence in Against Depression, published in 2005; the end notes provide a short bibliography on the topic.

So (contra Kirsch) it remains easy, in the face of evidence that tianeptine works, to imagine that the benefits of antidepressants are due to their chemical activity. While there has always been reason to doubt the "chemical imbalance" theory of depression causation, decades of research ranging across a range of scientific disciplines support the idea that antidepressants operate initially via the drugs' main effects, namely by altering the way the brain handles neurotransmitters. That's why we have structurally diverse "me-too" drugs, ones that, however else they differ, all affect serotonin and norepinephrine pathways. To set aside the testimony of animal model research, brain enzyme research, the new work on neurogenesis, and on and on—this stance has the whiff about it of science denial. It is one that a major magazine should have showcased cautiously, if at all, and only after having done some serious homework.

Tags: tianeptine; antidepressants

My gossipy fascination with the Mark and Jenny Sanford debacle has been stimulated with this revelation from Jenny Sanford that Mark refused to pledge fidelity in his wedding vows. So much for the heroic image of Jenny Sanford as the woman who puts her foot down. Personally, I never bought that story, since the act of creating a traditional patriarchal marriage strikes hard against the strong, independent woman image. Now we're getting a reminder of exactly what that means, but it's not quite enough. It's interesting that Mark felt above the vow of fidelity, but I want to know if Jenny was still required to vow obedience.

Jenny Sanford is coasting along on the soft bigotry of low expectations, as the rare political wife who walks out (though only after a humiliation that puts other humiliations suffered by long-suffering wives to shame). Good for her, I guess, but I will remain skeptical and unimpressed unless she starts actually rebelling against the cultural trend of religious conservatives openly demanding wifely submission.

The Sanfords are hard to place religiously. On one hand, they're apparently Episcopalians, and there's reason to believe Mark Sanford was reticient to Bible-thumping in the usual way. On the other hand, Mark Sanford also has associations with the notorious C Street Family, a fundamentalist religious cult for politicians, and he spoke fluent fundie-ese in the days after the big reveal about his affair. So what I want to know from Jenny Sanford are the answers to these questions: Were they members of the religious right in good standing? Did they build a marriage to be modern and egalitarian, or were they part of the fundamentalist throwback to male headship-style marriages? Or did they start off as the former and move to the latter as Mark Sanford engaged with fundamentalism? If she was ever in a fundamentalist marriage, does she repudiate that belief system?

If Jenny Sanford breaks out of the "woe is me" touring and moves into an actual critique of male-dominated marriage, then I'll start finding her interesting. At present time, though, I have to point out that breaking up a marriage on the grounds of adultery hardly shakes things up for the Christian fundamentalists who have so much power in the Republican party. Adultery and abandonment are the only grounds for divorce in the standard fundamentalist dogma (but not domestic violence). You can leave an adulterous husband without striking back against the sexist model of marriage offered by religious conservatives. But Jenny Sanford has a chance here to say something interesting and different; let's hope she takes it.

Tags: fundamentalism, Jenny Sanford, mark sanford, south carolina

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker has earned as many Oscar nominations as her ex-husband James Cameron's Avatar, meaning that the media narrative of this Oscar season (as Jess pointed out) will surely constellate around the "Battle of the Sexes"—or "Battle of the Exes." A tiresome narrative, perhaps, but there is a way that their films do represent polar extremes. Cameron has a lavish feel for the tenderness (and violence) that springs up between men and aliens, whether the "aliens" be robotic machines or acid-blooded creatures who want to lay eggs in your throat. The dialogue in a Cameron movie is usually, as Hanna put it to me the other day, aggressively bad; Cameron is interested in dialogue only insofar as it positions the characters in his films for disaster. His characters are archetypes, always rushing onto the next archetypal moment, whether DiCaprio's Jack screaming "I'm on top of the world" from a boat, or Sigourney Weaver's Ripley growling "Get away from her, bitch!" as the queen alien menaces poor orphaned Newt.

Bigelow, by contrast, has a great directorial feel for the way dialogue creates texture and drama, and an eerie feel for the kinds of male relationships Cameron seems to care less about; you can see the evidence in The Hurt Locker and in Point Break. While Bigelow didn't write The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal did) or Point Break, she knows how to establish charged masculine space, and the dialogue between men in her films is at once natural and poignant. Perhaps that could seem like another version of men-are-action, women-are-talk, but it's not that simple, somehow. Cameron is, I think, the more sentimental filmmaker of the two; Bigelow may understand words, but it's the nonverbal energy between men she most memorably evokes.

Tags: avatar, James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, oscars, point break, The Hurt Locker

—South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is battling John Edwards for title of "worst husband ever." According to Jenny Sanford's book out Friday, Staying True, her estranged husband would not agree to be faithful in their wedding vows. [ABC News]

—Michelle Obama is stepping up her fight against childhood obesity, making it her signature issue as first lady. She's taking flack around the Web for mentioning that Malia was once "getting a little chubby" during her advocacy efforts. [Politico, Jezebel]

—Sarah Palin wrote an op-ed in USA Today to explain why she's speaking at the Tea Party Convention. She forgets to mention the fact that she is being paid $100,000 for her efforts. [USA Today, Gawker]

—Will Katie Couric jump to daytime TV? There is some speculation that CBS won't want to pay her the big bucks for another year as evening news anchor now that her contract is up. [NY Post via Daily Beast]

—Best headline of the day: "Cellulite? Try organic Indian knickers." Apparently an Indian underwear manufacturer claims that their neem-tree-oil-infused panties will keep the ripples away. Okaaaay. [Telegraph]

Tags: katie couric, mark sanford, Michelle Obama, organic indian knickers, Sarah Palin