Dear Dr. Fausto-Sterling:

As I always preface everything I say and write with some disclaimer, I maintain true to tradition. This is not actually a letter addressed to Dr. Fausto-Sterling, although I would probably consider her opinion and experience to be vastly more substantial and legitimate than the sources of this article.


I don't regularly peruse CBS news's website for articles, but this one caught my attention and nearly knocked me off my chair.  In an article published just over two years ago, at www.cbsnews.com that asserted that women who take oral contraceptives are choosing the "wrong sex partners." 

Admittedly, I read the article, because I thought it was about something completely different, but alas, it was an article that is probably more fitting confined to the pages of Cosmo magazine than affiliated with a news organization boasting the careers of legitimate journalists like Diane Sawyer, Mike Wallace, and Barbara Walters, to name a few.

The information was published from WebMD. That in of itself should find the author of the article unemployed.  I have no idea where he is today, but I would venture a guess he is not a medical correspondent for CNN.

Loosely, the article, which can be found in its entirety at the link above, states that in a study of 60 HETEROSEXUAL women, when taking oral contraceptives, they found a correlation linking the desired pheromones of the men they were attracted to, as well as their genetic similarity to the women surveyed.

I am not a medical detective, despite my addiction to House, but I'm certain if I tried to publish a "study" of only sixty people and neglected to normalize the data at all, I would receive hearty laughter and a few raised eyebrows.

My larger concern, and the reason for the blog rant has more to do with the title. Dr. Fausto-Sterling (who is also a renowned professor at Brown University School of Medicine) would probably either completely dismiss this ignorant lack of comprehensive data, or completely attack the heart of the non-scholarly issue.  Someday if I ever meet Dr. Fausto-Sterling in person, I doubt this will be the first question on the list.

Anyhow, take care and have a pleasant day!
-Shayna