[Wo]man vs. Mother Nature

On MSNBC (a site I secretly frequent despite it being owned by Microsoft), I stumbled upon an article about a new drug that will change a woman's cycle from 28 days to 3 months. What is appalling is not the fact that a man probably invented this drug (and I can think of only one reason a man might). What's appalling is the fact that doctors seem to actually listen to, if not obey, what their patients think their own treatments should be. The very fact that our society tolerates advertisements on television that say simply, "You'll feel great! Ask your doctor for the purple pill!" without any mention of the drug's name or its purpose shows what a designer drug society we live in, preyed upon not by a bunch of black men standing on street corners, but really rich white men, wearing a lab coats. Whatever happened to the doctors who say, "Ummm, no. I will not prescribe that drug to you. You don't need it"?

Devil's advocate time. The drug was actually invented by Barr Laboratories. A cursory search for the specific name of the inventor could not be found on Google - which is not to say the inventor was necessarily a man. But, come on... if it was a woman, you know they would be playing up the fact.

But I digress. The drug does have positive uses which the article on iVillage mentions at the bottom of page 2. But that is really not the point. What one should take away from these articles is that [wo]man-kind seems obsessed with subverting Mother Nature any chance it gets. For example, the article on MSNBC mentions women scheduling cesarean sections with their doctor because they don't want to inconvenienced by the birth. Am I the only one absolutely appalled by this?

I just can't wait to see the kind of irony Mother Nature will dole out when evolution takes us down a peg or two when we finally and quite literally out-do ourselves.

On a side note, I found this web page which details a discussion among women about "Would you stop menstruating if you could?" Seasonale is mentioned, but it is at least interesting to hear a woman's perspective on the matter.