How We Get Our Information

Our Information

Our main sources are published medical studies and recent textbooks on women's health or individual subjects within women's health. We review a wide variety of opinion on the what the facts are. And we review the differing advice on what to do with the facts. The contradictions and gray areas are critically analyzed by physicians in women's health.

We have an expertise, not only in women's health, but also in research methodology and statistics. Given that medical research on women was almost non-existent before 1990, these skills are essential. So unlike other health sites, we can question the conclusions of studies. We have gone as far as running our own statisitical analysis on other people's data, when we think they haven't used the right statisical tests or missed important results. We may point out flaws in the information and tell you why you might not want to accept the conclusions. We were the first to warn of the dangers of Fen-Phen (1996), the ineffectiveness of Fosamax (1996), and the problems with Tamoxifen (1998) to name a few.

We also get general statistics from a number of sources, including the FDA, the CDC, and various women's health medical publications. We know the exact definitions of the terms used and pay attention to qualifiers and modifers of those terms, so you can know if they apply to you and how. If there are potential flaws and biases stemming from the ways they collect their data, we let you know.

What don't we do?

We don't have a writer doing phone interviews with just any doctor who will talk to us, who are probably not experts in women's health, and probably don't have time to keep up with the latest.
We don't use product manufacturers or anyone with a self-interest a sole source of information.
We don't have writers whose only experience is sex, love, or relationship columns who are looking up things on other websites and re-stating them.
We do not present information or suggestions that were developed on male research subjects as if they automatically apply to women.

Our content, once researched, is written by a team of experienced health writers. It has the input of a women's health physician, Karen Sarpolis, M.D. at every step from topic selection to final copy.

Individual questions cannot always be answered directly due to the sheer number of inquiries made. However, we do use questions to help guide us in deciding which areas we should concentrate in that would be of the most interest to our readers.