Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-417) and index.

Backlash exposed the undeclared war against American women in the workplace. The Beauty Myth shattered and forever changed how women perceive themselves. Now, in Outrageous Practices, medical journalists Leslie Laurence and Beth Weinhouse shine a penetrating light on the medical establishment and discover pervasive neglect, rampant gender bias, and systematized discrimination in women's health care - an issue that promises to galvanize women in the nineties. A passionate and illuminating study, Outrageous Practices encompasses what no single book, article, speech, or conference has done - and lays bare the startling facts: women's medical complaints are more than twice as likely as men's to be dismissed by doctors as psychosomatic; 90% of women with breast cancer are eligible for lumpectomies, yet more than half will undergo mastectomies; no definitive research exists about the long-term safety of birth control pills, yet doctors have prescribed them to millions of women for decades; treatments for heart disease, the number one killer of women in this country, have been tested mainly on men; women with kidney failure are 30% less likely to receive kidney transplants than men; and in thirty years of research on treatments for alcoholism, only 8,000 of the 110,000 subjects studied were women. Armed with these stark truths, Outrageous Practices investigates medical schools, where inflatable sex dolls are used to teach anatomy; explores research facilities, where "male doctors in their fifties are studying other male doctors in their fifties"; and takes to task physicians' offices, where female patients are treated differently from their male counterparts. As Laurence and Weinhouse eloquently demonstrate, sexist medicine is bad science - and the demand for nonsexist treatment is nothing less than the demand for equitable treatment in research, education, and patient care. Outrageous Practices is an extraordinary and revealing resource for women who care about their health and want to take charge of their lives and the lives of their daughters.

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