Barbara Seaman, 72; Pioneer In Women's Health Movement
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 29, 2008; B07
Barbara Seaman, 72, a writer and activist who challenged the
safety of hormone replacement therapy and early oral
contraceptives and became a central figure in the women's
health movement, died Feb. 27 at her home in Manhattan. She
had lung cancer.
The health movement of the 1970s urged women to educate
themselves about their bodies and demand more control over
their medical care. Ms. Seaman helped shepherd the movement
by raising important, often overlooked questions about
adequate testing for drugs.
She was also credited with helping to create the concept of
patients' rights, particularly "informed consent" and proper
warning labels on drugs.
Over time, she proved correct about the dangers of high
doses of the female hormone estrogen in the earliest oral
contraceptives. She also denounced hormone replacement
therapy, which for decades was promoted as a magic bullet to
keep menopausal women young and sexy.
Her books included "The Doctors' Case Against the Pill"
(1969), which triggered congressional hearings into the
safety of oral contraceptives, and "The Greatest Experiment
Ever Performed on Women" (2003), an expos¿ of hormone
replacement therapy.
In 1975, Ms. Seaman co-founded the National Women's Health
Network, an advocacy and watchdog group in Washington that
worked to eliminate quotas for women in medical schools and
give women the right to information about medical treatments
and alternatives.
Ms. Seaman was among the first to question using hormone
treatments to address symptoms of menopause, decades before
the Women's Health Initiative released its long-term study
in 2002 showing that such regimens significantly increase
the risk of stroke, breast cancer and other diseases.
Vivian Pinn, a pathologist who directs the National
Institutes of Health's Office of Research on Women's Health,
said Ms. Seaman felt "vindicated" by the Women's Health
Initiative study, for which she was an unofficial
consultant.
"She was an advocate who challenged anyone she needed to
challenge, including me, and recognized the importance of
science" -- not just ideology -- "in responding to questions
she raised," Pinn said.
Ms. Seaman was a self-described "muckraker" whose polemical
language and approach were sometimes considered distractions
by reviewers of her books. She invoked Nazi medical
experiments when confronting pharmaceutical companies, the
Food and Drug Administration and others in the position to
research, market and approve hormone drugs for women.
Ms. Seaman said her tone was justified because she had
marshaled evidence that the pharmaceutical industry
suppressed or ignored negative clinical studies of their
products.
She said she saw transcripts of meetings between
contraceptive manufacturers and clinical researchers who
knew of women's deaths that possibly resulted from the pill
but who joked about tight girdles causing the fatal blood
clotting. Ms. Seaman said she never took birth control
pills.
Among Ms. Seaman's early targets was Robert A. Wilson, a
gynecologist whose best-selling book "Feminine Forever"
(1966) described hormone therapy as a cure for what he
called women's "deficiency disease."
Wilson, whose book was funded secretly by an estrogen
manufacturer, said women taking estrogen at 50 could "still
look attractive in sleeveless dresses or tennis shorts."
Ms. Seaman responded, "How do you know that it isn't from
the tennis?"
Barbara Ann Rosner was born Sept. 11, 1935, in New York,
where her father was assistant commissioner of social
services. Her mother taught high school English.
After graduating from Oberlin College in 1956, she started
writing and editing for women's magazines. She was a
columnist for the Ladies' Home Journal in the late 1960s
when she began receiving letters from readers concerned
about blood clots, heart attack, depression and other
serious medical conditions after taking oral contraceptives.
"I started finding out very early on that the patients
taking the pill didn't agree with the doctors that it was
perfectly safe and simple and wonderful," Seaman said. "The
early pills had 10 times the amount of hormones they have
now. They were a massive overdose."
She interviewed doctors and officials at health
organizations for her first book, "The Doctors' Case Against
the Pill," considered by many a landmark text that led Sen.
Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) to hold hearings in 1970 about the
safety of oral contraceptives.
However, Ms. Seaman and other activists said they were
appalled not only by the lack of female witnesses but also
by testimony from one doctor that "estrogen is to cancer
what fertilizer is to wheat." Feminists disrupted the
hearings in protest.
Public outcry from the hearings stimulated research to find
safer drugs as well as drug label warnings. By the 1980s,
manufacturers in the United States drastically lowered
estrogen doses in oral contraceptives; they had been lowered
years earlier in Britain.
Ms. Seaman wrote "Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones"
(1977) with her second husband, psychiatrist Gideon Seaman.
Her other books included a biography of racy novelist
Jacqueline Susann, "Lovely Me" (1987), the basis for a TV
film staring Michele Lee. Ms. Seaman recently co-authored
two books on women's health with Laura Eldridge, including
"The Body Politic," an anthology of writings from the
movement.
Her marriages to Peter Marks, Gideon Seaman and Milton
Forman ended in divorce.
Survivors include three children from her second marriage,
Noah Seaman, Elana Seaman and Shira Seaman, all of
Manhattan; her stepmother, Ruth Gruber of Manhattan; two
sisters, Jeri Drucker and Elaine Rosner-Jeria, both of
Manhattan; a stepbrother, David Michaels of Bethesda; a
stepsister, Celia Michaels of London; and four
grandchildren.
