Currently the media have been sprouting stories reporting on a study by British researchers that asked women if they have a g-spot. According to the report’s author, the findings show “fairly conclusively that the idea of a G-spot is subjective.”

I have a one-word response to this: OY! If you are to believe the people who designed this study, to prove or disprove the existence of an anatomical structure, you ask people if it exists. Say what? In my opinion, if you want to discover the existence of a particular body part, it makes a lot more sense to study actual bodies. If you’re looking for subjective information about how much pleasure they receive from said structure, that’s when it makes sense to inquire.

Asking a woman if she has a g-spot is like asking a man if he has a prostate (or like asking anyone if they have an appendix). How would they know, other than by general reputation? However, if you wanted to discover how many men receive pleasure from prostate stimulation, that’s when it’s logical to question them—though the accuracy of the answers will usually be a bit suspect, and your findings will probably vary significantly depending on exactly who and how you ask.

Interestingly, the British study excluded lesbians and bisexual women and asked no questions about specific sexual activities. I’m not surprised that women whose predominant sexual relationships are heterosexual and whose erotic activities probably focus on penis-in-vagina intercourse don’t have a high appreciation of this part of their genital equipment. In general, penile stimulation is one of the least effective ways to stimulate the g-spot.

Here we have another seriously flawed study with utterly unsupported conclusions that’s bandied around by the mainstream media as if it were valid. Such is the power of “science,” even when it’s bad science. Media misinterpretation of scientific studies is commonplace, but this doesn’t keep it from being a pet peeve of mine, along with its near cousin—scientists who design studies badly and then put forth their conclusions as if they were proven by their data.

Ask women about the existence of specific parts of their genital anatomy, and the only thing you’ll discover, as I did from decades of midwifery and gynecology practice, is that an enormously high percentage of women don’t know the most basic facts about their equipment. When you understand how many women (and men) are still searching for the clitoris, you’ll look at research like this and ask yourself: What were they thinking?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6973971.ece

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/sexy_spot_myth_8T9jQ5V3T05pJ80XQohIYO

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/149542/G-spot-is-just-in-the-mind-

Way back in the pre-Internet dark ages of 1966, gynecologist Dr. Robert A. Wilson authored “Feminine Forever” in which he launched the tide of experts touting the need for menopausal women to take exogenous estrogen. Dr. Wilson warned, “No woman can be sure of escaping the horror of this living decay. There is no need for either valor or pretense. The need is for hormones.” He heralded the shift from menopause as a life passage to a horrendous but preventable disease.

 Once drug companies realized how much money could be made selling this fountain of youth, they employed all the tricks in their very deep bag to make billions of dollars. At various points over the past four decades, the pharmaceutical industry has claimed a multitude of benefits from those little estrogen pills—they’ll protect your skin from wrinkles, keep your vagina wet and pliable, promote heart and bone health, improve muscle tone, not to mention taming the wild mood swings, hot flashes and the general malaise and withering of post-menopausal aging. As an actor who plays a doctor in a commercial says, “When considering menopause, consider the entire body of evidence.” The fake Dr. Heartman intones, “Speak to your doctor about what you can do to help protect your health during and after menopause.”

Not all voices have been so supportive of hormonal drugs. In 1977, Barbara Seaman’s book Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones warned of evidence that taking exogenous estrogen could cause breast cancer, strokes and blood clots. Her clearly articulated and evidence-backed warnings were heeded by some and ignored by many.

The evidence that taking hormones can lead to increased cancer and other health risks has been around for decades, but that didn’t stop the drug dealers (I mean, drug companies) from peddling their pills as a panacea for all the terrible effects of aging, whether it’s illnesses or the visible signs of the accumulated years. According to their convincing sales efforts, from chirpy post-menopausal post-babes, or real and faux medical professionals, we have been assured that hormones will come to the rescue.  

Despite multiple studies showing the increased risk of endometrial (uterine lining) cancer and later  studies documenting an increased incidence of breast cancer, the drug companies continued their pep-talks for estrogen and maintained their claimed innocence about the risks.

So, what’s new in the battle over hormones, health and huge profits? The courts are chiming in and they’re finding that the pharmaceutical industry wasn’t so innocent after all. A Pennsylvania jury recently  awarded over 75 million dollars to a prior estrogen-using plaintiff who subsequently developed cancer. And why are juries rewarding this cancer patient so liberally? Because documents pried with legal levers from the drug companies files have shown that they spent many millions of dollars to influence the medical and consumer communities. They distracted them from valid health concerns attempted and sometimes succeeded in undermining unfavorable scientific data, and ignored mounting evidence of risks.

The moral of the story is an old wrinkly one that is nonetheless wise—when Big Money meshes with the desire for perpetual youth, beware! The devil wears a white lab coat and his offer to trade your hot flashes now for cancer later is a very bad bargain.

Resources:

Menopause, as Brought to You by Big Pharma