While the high visibility of my public life has not always brought me personal peace and happiness, it has lent a certain universal quality to my various metamorphoses. Because I believed that to be loved I had to be perfect, I moved "out of myself"--my body--early on and have spent much of my life searching to come home ... to be embodied. I didn't understand this until I was in my 60s and started writing this book. I have come ...

Imagine your life this way. You get up in the morning and breakfast with your three kids. One is already doomed to die in infancy. Your husband works 200 miles away, comes home twice a year and sleeps around in between. You risk your life in every act of sexual intercourse. You go to work past a house where a teenager lives alone tending young siblings without any source of income. At another house, the wife was branded a ...

Oral sex can get most men's attention. The topic becomes considerably more relevant, however, when coupled with a new study linking the human papillomavirus to an increased risk of a kind of oral cancer more often seen in men. The study, which appears in this week's New England Journal of Medicine , shows that men and women who reported having six or more oral-sex partners during their lifetime had a nearly ninefold increased risk of ...

At the University of Connecticut, planning for the H1N1 virus means, to begin with, clearing some serious storage space: STORRS, Connecticut (CNN) -- At the University of Connecticut, planning for the H1N1 virus means, to begin with, clearing some serious storage space: • 15,000 surgical masks for patients who might become infected. • 28,000 doses of Advil • 28,000 doses of Tylenol • 10,000 fever thermometers • Thousands of bottles of hand sanitizers. "We have been busy working all summer," ...

A coroner's report says that a man arrested in the violent aftermath of Iran's presidential elections died from beatings, Iranian media reported Monday in what appeared to be the first official confirmation of a detainee's death from mistreatment. The death of Mohsen Rouhol-Amini was the result of "repeated blows and severe physical injuries" and other mistreatment at Tehran's Kahrizak prison, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported, citing an informed source. Officials initially had said Rouhol-Amini had died from illness. Kahrizak ...

On the surface, it seems like a fine idea; reproductive rights groups certainly think so. In July, the Ugandan government announced that, using cash from the U.N. Population Fund, it would distribute 100,000 female condoms in a bid to stop a resurgence of HIV/AIDS. Advocates cheered the initiative, saying it would give women more control over their own bodies. But in the weeks since, major funders of anti-HIV/AIDS programs have shown far less enthusiasm, with many deciding not to ...

Swine flu arrived in Macon County, Alabama, last week, showing up in classrooms at all levels and leaving a spate of empty desks in its wake. But authorities are battling the virus on its own turf, using vacant seats as both a map and compass to stem the tide. When the virus entered the United States last April, the Centers for Disease Control issued test kits to physicians around the country to record confirmed cases. But by late July, ...

Influenza vaccinations are usually an afterthought for most people. Despite the easy availability of the shots, fewer than 40% of Americans get them in any one year—never mind that flu kills some 36,000 of us annually. But this flu season is likely to be different. Thanks to the new H1N1/09 virus, to which almost none of us are immune, flu anxiety is high—and demand for the new vaccine should be too. Washington is now gearing up to respond, hoping ...

Officials in Mexico's Chiapas state postponed classes Friday for more than 1 million students in an effort to avoid a resurgence of H1N1 flu, which has sickened thousands throughout Mexico this year. Chiapas Education Secretary Javier Alvarez Ramos and state Health Secretary James Gomez Montes said classes will start August 31 for middle and high school students and September 7 for elementary pupils, the state-run Notimex news agency said. About 1.55 million students will be affected, 850,000 of them in ...

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has been diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, commonly known as the swine flu, the government said in a televised statement on Tuesday. Arias fell ill on Sunday, complaining of a sore throat and temperature, Presidential Minister Rodrigo Arias said. A doctor's visit on Tuesday revealed that the president had the H1N1 virus, cases of which had been reported earlier in the Costa Rican capital of San Jose. The president's overall health was ...