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Daily Rounds: Americans Back Birth Control Policy; Probing Paternity Leave; Parkinson's Drug For Brain Injuries; Sex And Your Headache

Sixty-Three Percent Of Voters Back Obama Birth Control Policy — Poll (Reuters) — "Nearly two-thirds of Americans favor President Barack Obama's policy requiring birth control coverage for female employees, including clear majorities of Roman Catholic, Protestant evangelical and independent voters, a poll showed on Thursday."

Does Paternity Leave Hurt Women? (Wall Street Journal) — "The majority of professors – both male and female, particularly the women – held the view that men and women should share child care duties. But only three of 109 male faculty members surveyed reported that they did half or more of the care, while 70 of 73 women reported doing at least half–even when both spouses worked full time. The study found that female professors who take paid maternity leave spent most of their time off to focus on infant care, including breastfeeding. Male professors, on the other hand, used their paid paternity leaves to focus on things other than infant care, such as research and publishing papers. The study also found that women enjoyed doing child care work more than men."

Parkinson's Disease Drug May Help Brain Injuries, Report Says (New York Times) — "Daily doses of a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease significantly improved function in severely brain-injured people thought to be beyond the reach of treatment, scientists reported on Wednesday, providing the first rigorous evidence to date that any therapy reliably helps such patients. The improvements were modest, experts said, and hardly amounted to a cure, or a quick means of “waking up” someone who has long been unresponsive. But they were meaningful, they said, and if replicated would give rehabilitation doctors something they have never had: a standard treatment for injuries that are not at all standard or predictable in the ways they affect the brain."

Not Tonight dear: Sex Problems Linked To Headaches (Today Health — MSNBC) — "Women who get frequent headaches or migraines are more likely than others to have sexual problems, a new study from Italy says. The results show that more than 90 percent of women seeking medical treatment for their headaches had significant impairments of their sexual function, and 29 percent reported being distressed over their sex life. "Women referred for severe head pain report a high rate of sexual symptoms and sexual distress," including low desire and sexual pain, the researchers wrote in their study."

This program aired on March 1, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.

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