Flash flood.

• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

Alicia Mundy's article ("Hot Flash, Cold Cash," January/February) mischaracterizes the goals and ignores the accomplishments of the Society for Women's HeaLth Research, using innuendo and misstatements to inaccurately portray the organization.

The real story is that the Society has successfully fought for policy and scientific changes to advance medical research. Our advocacy efforts to routinely include women in clinical trials and analyze research data by sex have provided vital new information to improve women's health. The Society helped achieve increased women's health-research funding, initiated a landmark Institute of Medicine report on analyzing data by sex, and continues to educate women about health issues that previously received no attention.

The Society is extremely successful both financially and legislatively at accomplishing long-range goals. Like other not-for-profit health organizations, the Society accepts individual, foundation, government, and corporate (who do a significant percentage of research in the U.S.) support for scientific meetings, advocacy, and public education programs.

While the Society's primary focus is on sex differences and clinical trials, we did comment on the Women's Health Initiative because of its significance to women. Our position is similar to those of the American College of Ob/Gyn, North American Menopause Association, and the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. Our statements and testimony as well as all our position papers, press releases, and reports are readily available on our Web site at www.womens-health.org.

DENISE FAUSTMAN, M.D., PH.D. Board Chair, Society for Women's Health Research; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Director, Immunology Laboratory, Mass. General Hospital I believe Alicia Mundy's article unjustly portrays Phyllis Greenberger and the Society for Women's Health Research, and, by extension, undermines the credibility of a vast number of not-for-profit health and patient-advocacy organizations. The Society is a hardworking nonprofit group that draws upon the leadership of some of the most distinguished scientists and authorities on women's health in the nation. For instance, it was the Society that urged the National Institutes of Health to properly study the effects of new medications on women and to boost the role of women as health-research professionals.

I look forward to the Society for Women's Health Research, with Phyllis...