Millions of healthy women take a powerful medication every day from their mid-teens to menopause - the Pill - but few know how this drug works or the potential side effects. Contrary to cultural myth, the birth-control pill impacts on every organ and function of the body, and yet most women do not even think of it as a drug. Depression, anxiety, paranoia, rage, panic attacks - just a few of the effects of the Pill on half of the over 80% of women who pop these tablets during their lifetimes. When the Pill was released, it was thought that women would not submit to taking a medication each day when they were not sick. Now the Pill is making women sick. However, there are a growing number of women looking for non-hormonal alternatives for preventing pregnancy. In a bid to spark the backlash against hormonal contraceptives, this book asks: Why can't we criticize the Pill? ,

Vast global resources are ploughed into the delivery of treatment interventions ranging from diet and lifestyle advice to complex surgery. In all cases, whatever the intervention, unless the recipient is engaged with the process and understands why the intervention has been offered and the part they play in its success, compliance is an issue. Even where the individual does engage and understand, he or she may choose not to comply. Non-compliance is estimated to cost the pharma industry US$70 billion per year. No figures exist for the cost to healthcare insurers and public health but non-compliance is undoubtedly one of the top five issues facing both drug developers and healthcare providers. During clinical trials, non-compliance undermines the accuracy of the data generated from the whole trial as well as particular aspects such as the efficacy of different dosages. This book explores the key factors which drive compliance and the part that healthcare professionals can play in improving this, with the key underlying goal of improving public health in its broadest sense.

Sweetening The Pill questions the truth of all that we have come to believe about the birth control pill and asks whether, under the cover of liberation, hormonal contraceptives have oppressed women.

From breast cancer and blood clots to depression and debilitating autoimmune disease, the health of millions of women has been sacrificed to chronic and deadly diseases In the Name of The Pill. This book highlights many of those ailments and examines the role hormonal birth control plays in each. Chapters devoted to individual diseases and conditions include lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, Crohn's disease, infertility, migraines, blood clots, diabetes, hair loss, thyroid and gallbladder disease. Yet, with significantly increased risk for all these conditions, the drug industry still tells us the benefits outweigh the risks. To understand the disconnect, In the Name of The Pill explores the history, economics, and politics that gave us birth control before it was proven safe, and exposes the powerful forces working to keep us in the dark.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year From a genuine hero of the American short story comes a luminous collection that reveals the seams of hurt, courage, and tenderness that run through the bedrock of contemporary American life. In these fourteen stories, Dubus depicts ordinary men and women confronting injury and loneliness, the lack of love and the terror of actually having it. Out of his characters' struggles and small failures--and their unexpected moments of redemption--Dubus creates fiction that bears comparison to the short story's greatest creators--Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor.

This book investigates how the externalisation of EU migration policies is implemented in Tunisia after the fall of the Ben Ali regime in 2011 through the involvement of civil society organisations. The ‘democratic transition’ initiated by the Tunisian Revolution led to the emergence of a ‘vibrant civil society’ as a new actor in the implementation of migration policies. In a country where migration issues are highly politicised and have strongly entered the public space, civil society is now included in the EU-Tunisia negotiation process and is assigned the role of an intermediary for the implementation of controversial European policies related to sedentarisation of the Tunisian population and to the construction of Tunisia as a ‘country of destination’. The volume concludes by suggesting an alternative way of thinking about migrant struggles challenging the European border regime as ‘uncivil society’ struggles.

Sugar substitutes have been a part of American life since saccharin was introduced at the 1893 World's Fair. In Empty Pleasures, the first history of artificial sweeteners in the United States, Carolyn de la Pena blends popular culture with business and women's history, examining the invention, production, marketing, regulation, and consumption of sugar substitutes such as saccharin, Sucaryl, NutraSweet, and Splenda. She describes how saccharin, an accidental laboratory by-product, was transformed from a perceived adulterant into a healthy ingredient. As food producers and pharmaceutical companies worked together to create diet products, savvy women's magazine writers and editors promoted artificially sweetened foods as ideal, modern weight-loss aids, and early diet-plan entrepreneurs built menus and fortunes around pleasurable dieting made possible by artificial sweeteners. NutraSweet, Splenda, and their predecessors have enjoyed enormous success by promising that Americans, especially women, can "have their cake and eat it too," but Empty Pleasures argues that these "sweet cheats" have fostered troubling and unsustainable eating habits and that the promises of artificial sweeteners are ultimately too good to be true.