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I Remember When

by Rose Madeline Mula

I may forget what I had for breakfast this morning, where I put my car keys when I came in the house with my groceries, and the name of the neighbor who moved in last week; but I remember lots of other stuff. For instance, I remember when …

Almost everyone covered all their hardwood floors with wall-to-wall carpeting.

Only those who couldn’t afford such plush luxury made do with bare floors.

We women wore agonizingly tight girdles to flatten our rear ends, instead of padding to emphasize them.

We wore bathing caps when we went swimming.

High heels were three-inchers, not the six-inch stilletos of today We wore those heels when we were “dressed up” — and never with jeans. In fact, we never wore jeans.

We wore dresses and skirts and crinoline petticoats; we wore hats and white gloves and silk stockings; and I remember when those stockings had seams up the back which we struggled to keep straight.

Men also wore hats — felt fedoras with brims, not baseball caps or visors — except on the golf course. And they didn’t wear them backwards or sideways, and never ever inside.

Men never wore earrings, or dresses — at least not in public, and especially not in parades down Fifth Avenue.

Planes had propellers; flight attendants were stewardesses, and stewardesses were always young, slim, and gorgeous. And they always served you free meals on flights over an hour long.

Cameras used film and flashbulbs; and Polaroid stunned the world by making a camera that would actually allow you to see a picture minutes after you snapped it!

Knowing how to type was a liability because it classified you as a secretary — those poorly-paid women who often were smarter than the bosses they typed for.

In fact, I remember typing, before word processing, and even before the IBM Selectric typewriter that let you choose among three different fonts. Yes, three!

Amazing! We never would have believed that some day we’d be able to choose from hundreds of fonts with the click of a key.

I remember the advent of personal computers (that cost $3,000!) with floppy discs that really were floppy, held only about 2,000 words, and restricted file names to eight letters or fewer. I remember how phenomenal we thought it was and how we were sure technology could not get better than that.

Students had to make do without calculators and laptops, and super market cashiers had to figure out the customer’s correct change manually. In fact, I remember the little neighborhood grocery store that preceded super markets.

A first class mail stamp cost three cents, and mail was delivered twice a day.

Milk was also delivered to your door; and because it wasn’t homogenized (the milk, not the door), if you left it outside for a short time in winter, the cream would rise to the top.

Photograph of a crinoline from the 1950s, Wikipedia; photograph of a typical typing pool from the timesunion.com

January 17, 2013
Where Doctors Are Scarce Nurse Practitioners Step In

By Christine Vestal, Stateline* Staff Writer, Pew Center on the States

Most people in this rural logging area of Buckingham County, VA have only one choice when they need medical care: the Central Virginia Community Health Center. On most days, at least 200 people show up at the center seeking treatment for maladies ranging from sore throats to depression to cavities.

The health center typically has four doctors on duty, but the clinical director, Dr. Randall Bayshore, says his staff would never meet local demand if it weren’t for the two nurse practitioners who provide the same care, to the same number of patients, as the doctors.

Buckingham County is one of roughly 5,800 U.S. communities, with about 55 million residents, that have a shortage of primary care physicians. In these places, many residents are forced to forgo regular checkups and treatment for chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes — harming their overall health.

A White House nurse prepares to administer the H1N1 vaccine to President Barack Obama at the White House on Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009

In 2014, when the new federal health care law extends insurance coverage to 30 million more people, the doctor shortage is likely to get worse. Anticipating this, states and the federal government are offering repayment of medical school loans and other incentives to encourage newly minted doctors to practice primary care in needy areas.

But efforts like these take years to pay off. So as an additional step, states are trying to loosen decades-old licensing restrictions, known as “scope of practice laws,” that prevent nurse practitioners from playing the lead role in providing basic health services.

Nurse practitioners, registered nurses with advanced degrees, are capable of providing primary-care services such as diagnosing and treating illnesses, prescribing medication, ordering tests and referring patients to specialists. But only 18 states and the District of Columbia currently allow nurse practitioners to perform these services independently of a doctor.

Political tension

A 2010 Institute of Medicine report, “The Future of Nursing,” cited nearly 50 years of academic studies and patient surveys in concluding that primary care provided by nurse practitioners has been as safe and effective as care provided by doctors. But efforts to change “scope of practice” laws to give nurse practitioners more independence have run into stiff opposition.

Organized physician groups, which hold sway in most legislatures, are reluctant to cede professional turf to nurses. Arguing that nurse practitioners lack the necessary level of medical training, they insist that it is unsafe for patients to be treated by nurse practitioners without a doctor’s supervision.

Some doctors also have a financial incentive to limit nurses’ independence. Often carrying heavy medical school loan debt, they can be loath to see their revenue diverted by competing health care services, particularly those with lower fees. The Federal Trade Commission has weighed in on legislative efforts to give nurse practitioners more autonomy in several states, arguing that physician groups have no valid reason for blocking such laws other than to thwart their competition.

Virginia is a case-in-point. After several failed attempts over the last decade, the legislature finally passed a nursing “scope of practice” law in 2011 that doctors and most nurse practitioners in the state say is a step forward. According to its authors, the aim of the law is greater patient access to primary care across the state.

January 15, 2013
Smell the Insidious Violence

by Doris O’Brien

For too many Americans, compassion for the victims of crime is matched by fascination for those who victimized them. Consider how the trials of O. J. Simpson and Casey Anthony monopolized the news. And then there is the psychological schmoozing over possible “motives” acted upon by insane killers … as if there could possibly be any rationale to explain their heinous acts.

Many crimes, though certainly not all, involve the use of guns. Gunfire has become so ubiquitous that the odd term “shooter” has now become part of our criminal lexicon. (When Nicole Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were murdered, nobody referred to the “knifer”!)

And when the horrific shootings took place in Newtown, CT — just as the season of Peace on Earth was about to descend, incredulous Americans felt as though they had endured the proverbial last straw. Our country, with its reputation for tackling and surviving such catastrophic events as the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II and 9/11, found itself mortified and stymied in the face such mounting and senseless violence.

Is America losing its grip? Despite statistics that indicate a general diminishing of violent crime in America, a frightening rash of mass murders continues to break out across the country, and often in places where one would least expect it. In the wake of each terrifying incident, a sort of predictable ritual has sprung up involving flowers, cards, teddy bears, midnight vigils, prayers, lighted candles, grim funeral processions and grief counselors. Even as we grieve, there is the infernal obsessing about why and how such things can be happening here in our own country.

There are those of us old enough to remember when crime was largely confined to shadowy figures in the underworld. There were no “drive-by” shootings with collateral damage. Children walked to school in the full expectation of getting there and back. No ersatz kids burst into classrooms with guns blazing. Few disgruntled former employees showed up at work, not to punch a time clock, but to punch out their their former colleagues.

This may be a simplistic comparison between what was and what is. Yet we need to ask ourselves what has happened in our lifetimes to create violence where it is least expected? By way of explanation, anguished Americans are now pledging that “enough is enough,” as some target in on what they regard as the silver bullet of destruction: Guns! If only these crazies had not been armed, we exclaim, none of this would have happened. Hence a clarion call for more stringent and responsible gun control.

Legislating, after all, is perhaps the easiest method whereby to solve an endemic problem. We’ve heard the expression “there ought to be a law,” and we tend to embrace that approach as a means to an end. Hence, the demand for stricter background checks, the banning of gun sales at shows; and further restricting the kinds of guns and ammunition permitted for sale to the public. In other words, we have begun to view gun ownership, in general, as more of a wrong than a right.

Who can fault frightened people for blaming the metal instead of the mentality? The concept of a ban on a commodity as a way of preventing bad behavior is nothing new. In the 20s, Prohibition was enacted to do just that. A law was passed making the sale and use of liquor illegal. If we didn’t have access to booze, the argument went, there wouldn’t be so many drunken brawls, accidents, killings. But Prohibition failed. Simply put, when people really want something that is denied them — and often they want it because it is denied them! — they will find other ways to get it, whether it is a habit, like hooch — or a hope, like freedom.

Still, there is surely little harm in banning the use and sale of certain weapons for sale. But if we think that such an action will solve the problem of violence in America, we are dead wrong. As one commentator put it, we will never make headway with crime in America until we get to its grass roots.

Houston Gun show at the George R. Brown Convention Center, 2007. Wikipedia

January 13, 2013
Dying Sooner and in Poorer Health in the US: Why?

On average, Americans die sooner and experience higher rates of disease and injury than people in other high-income countries, says a new report from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. The report finds that this health disadvantage exists at all ages from birth to age 75 and that even advantaged Americans — those who have health insurance, college educations, higher incomes, and healthy behaviors — appear to be sicker than their peers in other rich nations.

“We were struck by the gravity of these findings,” said Steven H. Woolf, professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chair of the panel that wrote the report. “Americans are dying and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health. What concerns our panel is why, for decades, we have been slipping behind.”

The report is the first comprehensive look at multiple diseases, injuries, and behaviors across the entire life span, comparing the United States with 16 peer nations — affluent democracies that include Australia, Canada, Japan, and many western European countries. Among these countries, the US is at or near the bottom in nine key areas of health: infant mortality and low birth weight; injuries and homicides; teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections; prevalence of HIV and AIDS; drug-related deaths; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; chronic lung disease; and disability.

Many of these health conditions disproportionately affect children and adolescents, the report says. For decades, the U.S. has had the highest infant mortality rate of any high-income country, and it also ranks poorly on premature birth and the proportion of children who live to age 5. U.S. adolescents have higher rates of death from traffic accidents and homicide, the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, and are more likely to acquire sexually transmitted infections. Nearly two-thirds of the difference in life expectancy between males in the U.S. and these other countries can be attributed to deaths before age 50.

These findings build on a 2011 Research Council report that documented a growing mortality gap among Americans over age 50. “It’s a tragedy. Our report found that an equally large, if not larger, disadvantage exists among younger Americans,” Woolf said. “I don’t think most parents know that, on average, infants, children, and adolescents in the US die younger and have greater rates of illness and injury than youth in other countries.”

The panel did find that the US outperforms its peers in some areas of health and health-related behavior. People in the US over age 75 live longer, and Americans have lower death rates from stroke and cancer, better control of blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and lower rates of smoking.

Root Causes

This health disadvantage exists even though the U.S. spends more per capita on health care than any other nation. Although documented flaws in the health care system may contribute to poorer health, the panel concluded that many factors are responsible for the nation’s health disadvantage.

January 11, 2013
In Minnesota, Democratic Grandmothers Gather Data About Their Neighbors

by Lois Beckett
ProPublica

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In Minnesota, Democratic volunteers scour their local newspapers each morning for letters to the editor with a political slant. They pay attention to the names of callers on radio shows. They drive through their neighborhoods and jot down the addresses of campaign lawn signs.

Then they feed the information into a state Democratic Party database that includes nearly every voter in Minnesota.

Some of the states’ few dozen data volunteers are so devoted that they log into the party database daily from their home computers. Deb Pitzrick, 61, of Eden Prairie, convinced a group of her friends to form the “Grandma Brigade.” These women, in their 50s, 60s and 70s, no longer want to knock on doors for the Democrats. Instead, they support the party by gathering public information about other voters.

Much of the data the Grandma Brigade collects is prosaic: records of campaign donations or voters who have recently died. But a few volunteers see free information everywhere. They browse the listings of names on Tea Party websites. They might add a record of what was said around the family Thanksgiving table — Uncle Mitch voted for Bachmann, cousin Alice supports gay marriage.

One data volunteer even joked about holding “rat out your neighbor parties,” where friends would be encouraged to add notes about the political views of other people on their block.

Once information about individual people is entered into the state party’s database, it doesn’t stay in Minnesota. Almost all the information collected by local volunteers like the Grandma Brigade also ends up in the party’s central database in Washington.

Few places have data volunteers as dedicated as the ones in Minnesota, which has been held up as a model for other state Democratic parties. Both Democrats and Republicans have centralized databases that, among other things, track opinions you share with local campaign volunteers.

Each piece of information the parties have stored about you might not be too interesting on its own. But taken together, they’re incredibly powerful. Political campaigns are using this voter data to predict voters’ behavior in increasingly sophisticated ways.

“People say that campaigns are more art than science. They’re wrong,” said Ken Martin, the chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

“We’re pretty sure, when we pull you up on a file, which way you’re going to vote,” he said. “It’s a little scary. A little big brother.”

Voters themselves have no way to know what data politicians have collected about them, or how campaigns are using or sharing that information. Indeed, the same politicians who are pushing for more transparency about the workings of the commercial data industry — including President Barack Obama — have said nothing about the information that political campaigns collect.

January 10, 2013
CultureWatch — The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy; The Mysteries and International Negotiating of Midsomer Murders and Kidnap and Ransom

In This Issue: David Nasaw does not ask his readers to like Joe Kennedy. He does not hold back on the damning stories of deceit and unbridled ambition. As the author of the biographies of both Andrew Carnegie and William Randolph Hearst, he’s familiar with both those character qualities. Midsomer Murders has a new detective and although still loyal to John Nettles we’re getting used to his somewhat pricklier cousin, actor Neil Dudgeon. Kidnap and Ransom has the plot and setting that intrigue as well as the attractive Trevor Eve.

Books

Reviewed by Jill Norgren

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy

By David Nasaw; c. 2012

Published by Penguin Press; Hardbook; ebook; 868pp.

The Kennedy Family at Hyannis Port, 04 September 1931. L-R: Robert Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy, Jean Kennedy (on lap of) Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (behind) Patricia Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (behind) Rosemary Kennedy. Edward Kennedy was not born yet. Photograph by Richard Sears in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

In 1938 the thirteen year-old daughter of actress Marlene Dietrich, Maria Riva, met fifty year-old Joseph P. Kennedy. Afterwards she observed that he was “kind of rakish,” adding, “for a man with such a patient little wife, who had borne him so many children, I thought he flirted a bit too much.” Kennedy probably would not have disagreed with this judgment; it was, after all, an image the handsome and stylish but often inappropriate patriarch sought to cultivate.

Some years ago Jean Kennedy Smith and Edward Kennedy invited historian David Nasaw to write this biography of their father. Nasaw, the well-respected biographer of Andrew Carnegie and William Randolph Hearst, agreed, with the proviso that the Kennedy family grant him “unfettered access” to Joseph P. Kennedy’s papers at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library as well as unrestricted permission to cite any document that he read. Nasaw spent six years conducting research and interviews. Although there may have been material outside of the Kennedy library that he did not see, The Patriarch, more than eight-hundred pages in length, creates a portrait based upon papers “seen by no one else.” For this reason, Nasaw contends, this new portrait “may bear slight resemblance to the ones that have appeared up to now in print or on film.”

Born in 1888, Joseph P. Kennedy grew up in easy circumstances. His father, Patrick Kennedy, was a powerful East Boston ward leader and businessman. Joe attended Boston Latin where he was popular and successful. At Harvard College, however, he found that being an Irish Catholic made him “the odd man out.” This identity followed him after graduation. He sought a place in a major Boston bank but discovered that such positions were reserved for “proper Bostonians.” For the rest of his life Kennedy both traded on his Irish Catholic identity and suffered because of it.

In 1914, Rose Fitzgerald, daughter of the mayor of Boston “Honey Fitz,” married Joe Kennedy. By this time Joe was an expert on bank regulation and president of an East Boston bank his father had helped to found. Rose later wrote that throughout their marriage she took care of the management of their home, while never inquiring or being told anything about her husband’s business. Joe wanted to have “comfort and peace and love …. he didn’t want a cocky wife or a complaining wife.” She had been brought up with these values and approved of them. For his part, Nasaw writes, Joe Kennedy “had pledged to faithfully love and support [Rose] and the children they might have together …. What he did not intend to do was give up being a ‘ladies man’.” And he did not.

January 9, 2013
2012, A Dubious Banner Year: From State Family Planning Funding to Reproductive Toxins

Reproductive health and rights were once again the subject of extensive debate in state capitols in 2012. Over the course of the year, 42 states and the District of Columbia enacted 122 provisions related to reproductive health and rights. One-third of these new provisions, 43 in 19 states, sought to restrict access to abortion services. Although this is a sharp decrease from the record-breaking 92 abortion restrictions enacted in 2011, it is the second highest number of new abortion restrictions passed in a year.

Please see here for a more detailed analysis.

Against the backdrop of a contentious presidential campaign in which abortion and even contraception were front-burner issues — to a degree unprecedented in recent memory — supporters of reproductive health and rights were able to block high-profile attacks on access to abortion in states as diverse as Alabama, Idaho, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Similarly, the number of attacks on state family planning funding was down sharply, and only two states disqualified family planning providers from funding in 2012, compared with seven in 2011. That said, no laws were enacted in 2012 to facilitate or improve access to abortion, family planning or comprehensive sex education.

Abortion

Twenty-four of the 43 new abortion restrictions were enacted in just six states. Arizona led the way, enacting seven restrictions; Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin each enacted at least three. Although some of the most high-profile debates occurred around legislation requiring that women seeking an abortion be required to first undergo an ultrasound or imposing strict regulations on abortion providers, most of the new restrictions enacted in 2012 concerned limits on later abortion, coverage in health insurance exchanges or medication abortion.

Mandating Non-Medically Necessary Procedures Prior to Abortion: Mandatory ultrasound provisions are intended to convince a woman to continue her pregnancy to term and require a provider to perform an ultrasound even when one is not medically necessary. At the beginning of 2012, it appeared that a number of states were poised to adopt such laws. However, in February, a firestorm erupted in Virginia when it became known that the proposed mandate would, in practice, necessitate performance of a transvaginal ultrasound. The controversy not only led to passage of a somewhat weaker requirement in Virginia but also is widely seen as having blunted efforts to mandate ultrasound in Alabama, Idaho and Pennsylvania. With the addition of Virginia, eight states now require an ultrasound prior to receiving an abortion.

January 8, 2013
If The Cup Fits, Wear It

There are circumstances when a degree in algebra would certainly be beneficial. Never once did any of my instructors say, “Pay attention young ladies! You’re going to need to know how to calculate your correct bra size someday and it won’t remain the same throughout your life. You don’t want people to look at your chest and realize you flunked algebra, do you?”

Warner’s 1944 advertisement for bra sizes A through D. They were second after S.H. Camp Company to make bras designed to fit differently sized breasts.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that branch of mathematics is called algebra.

Shopping for bras is on my ‘Ten Most Dreadful Activities I Will Avoid as Long as Possible’ list. I haven’t examined my motives behind this deep-seated aversion, since analyzing my quirky behaviors is also on the list.

Every two or three years the issue of new bras creeps up to the top of ‘Things I Can’t Ignore Anymore’ list and I literally have to do the math.

A one-inch thick popular home-shopping catalog with the next seasonal fashion trends graced the mailbox in a timely manner. My husband checked out the men’s work clothes section and marked the single page (out of 900, including the cover) he planned to use when placing an order. Did you realize that denim overalls are always in season? It’s not fair.

Mike slid the catalog toward my end of the countertop so I could take a turn. I flipped though layered looks, coordinates, evening gowns, jackets and sleepwear, followed by foundation garments. I suspect that manufacturers theorize women may be willing to accept foundation garments as a bit more pricey than if the product was labeled as ordinary underwear.

I hesitated a moment, tempted by the ease of shopping from home: twenty-seven pages of bras to scrutinize, excluding the maternity section. The photographer’s models all looked healthy, although young, with believable silhouettes. There wasn’t an anorexic woman in the bunch. My hopes were raised.

I first narrowed the field by avoiding anything constructed with narrow straps. That’s a definite no-no for my ‘grandmotherly’ figure. I skipped past push-ups, pocket bras (whatever those are), tubes, strapless and the ‘special occasion convertible torsolette’. I eliminated bras constructed with lace, embroidery, polyurethane, or any vaguely described as using domestic/imported materials, along with previously unfamiliar man-made fabrics such as Crepeset®, elastane or Spanette®. Do I need to mention that zebra and baby leopard prints are automatically out of the running?

Read the rest of Roberta McReynolds’ article, If the Cup Fits, Wear It

January 6, 2013
Women in Combat and Under the Waves: Redefining the Role of Women in the Military

UPDATE:

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey joined Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta at a Pentagon news conference on January 24th, 2013 to announce the decision and to sign a joint memorandum that sets the process in motion.

“Today we are acting to expand the opportunities for women to serve in the United States armed forces and to better align our policies with the experiences we have had over the past decade of war,” Dempsey said. “Ultimately, we’re acting to strengthen the joint force.”

As part of the new policy, the services are reviewing about 53,000 positions now closed by unit but that will be open to women who meet standards developed for the positions.

According to senior defense officials, the services are also reviewing about 184,000 positions now closed by specialty but that will be open to women who meet the standards.

Read the rest of the Department of Defense release:
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=119100

Over the years, more than 283,000 female servicemembers have been deployed worldwide. In approximately 10 years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, over 800 women have been wounded and over 130 have died.

According to the Department of Defense (DOD), as of February 29, 2012, over 20,000 female members had served or were serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. (US forces were out of Iraq as of Dec. 2011.) On numerous occasions women have been recognized for their heroism, two earning Silver Star medals.

This has resulted in a renewed interest in Congress, the Administration, and beyond in reviewing and possibly refining or redefining the role of women in the military.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greet the US Navy’s first contingent of women submariners to be assigned to the Navy’s operational submarine force. White House, May 28, 2012.

The expansion of roles for women in the armed forces has evolved over decades. Women are not precluded from serving in any military unit by law today. (Past laws that precluded women from serving on board military aircraft and ships assigned combat missions were repealed in the early 1990s.) DOD policy restricting women from serving in ground combat units was most recently modified in 1994.

Under this policy, women may not be assigned to units, below the brigade level, whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground. Primarily, this means that women are barred from infantry, artillery, armor, combat engineers, and special operations units of battalion size or smaller. Since there are no laws precluding such service, changes made in assigning women are only controlled under current policies which may be modified by the Administration and DOD.

In 2006, Congress enacted language prohibiting any change in existing policies without the Secretary of Defense first notifying Congress of such changes followed by a waiting period. In 2010, the Navy notified Congress that it was modifying its policy to allow women to serve as permanent crew members aboard submarines. The Navy has been in the process of assigning women to submarines; on December 5, 2012, it was reported that three female sailors were assigned to the USS Maine (SSBN 741) and USS Wyoming (SSBN 742), becoming the first female officers to qualify for submarine duty.

Recent changes in Army doctrine have called into question the ground exclusion policy, or at least, the services’ adherence to it. This is the result particularly from the policy of collocating support units (to which women are assigned) with combat units, along with adapting to the unusual (nonlinear) warfare tactics encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the utilization of women in what some view as new nontraditional roles in Iraq and Afghanistan (for example, the “Lioness” program, which employed women to search Muslim women, and the emerging all female Cultural Support Teams).

The FY2009 Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act contained language establishing the Military Leadership Diversity Commission. Among its duties, the Commission was to conduct a study and report on the “establishment and maintenance of fair promotion and command opportunities for ethnic- and gender-specific members of the Armed Forces at the O-5 (Lieutenant Colonel for Army, Marine Corps and Air Force, and Commander for Navy and Coast Guard) grade level and above.” Among its recommendations, the Commission stated that DOD should take deliberate steps to open additional career fields and units involved in direct ground combat.

Such a move would essentially limit or repeal, in its entirety, the 1994 DOD policy regarding women serving in combat units. In February 2012, DOD announced modifications to this policy. Women’s right supporters contend that the exclusionary policy prevents women from gaining leadership positions and view expanding the roles of women as a matter of civil rights. Critics view such changes as potentially damaging to military readiness.

Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists)

Women Chart a New Course Onboard US Navy Submarines

January 4, 2013
Against All Odds, Rita Levi-Montalcini’s Story: “No food, no husband, and no regrets”
Editor’s Note: Ms. Levi-Montalcini died on December 30th 2012, at the age of 103.

Born on April 22, 1909, in Turin, Italy, Rita Levi-Montalcini overcame all sorts of challenges on her way to winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986. She’s the oldest living Nobel laureate and the only one to reach her 100th – and now her 101st. – birthday. Rita’s first big hurdle was persuading her father to let her go to college. Mr. Levi, an electrical engineer and mathematician, believed that a career interferes with the duties of a wife and mother. Eventually, he came around, thank goodness. Rita enrolled in the local university, and she graduated from medical school in 1936 and went on to pursue basic research in neurology and psychiatry at the University of Turin.

Rita, whose family was Jewish, suffered under Benito Mussolini’s rule during World War II. In 1938, Mussolini issued the Manifesto of Race and laws barring Jewish citizens from academic and professional careers. Not to be thwarted, Rita set up lab equipment in her bedroom. Soon, heavy bombing in the city forced her to move her lab to her family’s country cottage. When the Germans invaded Italy in 1943, she moved again, this time to Florence, where she lived under ground – with another makeshift lab – until the end of the war.

After the war, she returned to the University of Turin Institute of Anatomy. Her work impressed Viktor Hamburger, head of the Zoology Department at Washington University in St. Louis. He invited her to collaborate with him as a research associate. Her plans to stay one semester in 1947 stretched into 30 years.

At Washington University, Rita worked with another faculty member, Stanley Cohen, on the growth of nerve fibers. Much of their work was funded by NIH. She and Cohen shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for isolating nerve growth factor (NGF)and epidermal growth factor (EGF). Her many discoveries in neurology and psychiatry have furthered our understanding of such diverse diseases as cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.

In addition to the Nobel prize, Rita has received many honors and awards — and she’s been serving in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life since 2001. Her achievements — against all odds — are still making a difference in the world today.

She told a reporter last year from her office in Rome that the secret of her longevity is, basically, “no food, no husband, and no regrets.” She:
- gets up at 5 a.m.,
- eats one meal a day (lunch),
- keeps her brain active by working in her lab in the morning and her foundation, which supports education for women in Africa, in the afternoon, and
- goes to bed at 11 p.m.
She’s also been a mentor her whole life and says she “encourages the young to have faith in themselves, and in the future.” She hopes she conveys to everyone the message that “ the important thing is to have lived with serenity using the rational left-hand side of one’s brain, and not the right side, the instinctive side, which leads to misery and tragedy.” From the now-retired NIH SciEd Blog: Another installment in our series honoring NIH-Supported Scientists on Their Birthdays

©Photograph, 1963, 2004-2009 Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri

Missouri Women in Health Sciences, Bernard Becker Medical Library
January 2, 2013