A NEW PRESCRIPTION FOR WOMEN'S HEALTH

From former director of the National Institutes of Health Healy, the first woman to hold that position, comes this guide to everything women ever wanted to know about their health but were afraid to ask the male-oriented medical establishment. Gender, she says, is ``a critical consideration in any responsible analysis of a patient's condition and in the choice of recommended treatment.'' Healy makes no bones about her self-empowerment agenda. She has picked ten of the most important medical issues that affect women todayincluding reproduction, menopause, cancer, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer'sand presents them here in layman's terms, outlining symptoms, treatments, and the myths that surround them (discussing diet, she notes that sugar substitutes ``are the snake oil of the twentieth century''). At the end of each chapter she gives a list of questions women should ask their doctors and prescriptions for what women can do politically and personally to help bring about cures or at least relief from their medical vulnerability.