Health Activism Issues
In 1979, O'Neil founded a small public interest research group, Woman Health International, with a team of volunteer librarians. The group's sole mission was to research the ingredients in tampons (a menstrual hygiene product) and to lobby the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to include consumers on the medical device review panel, then composed entirely of industry officials or medical specialists working for the manufacturers. The resulting paper was published in the Center for Science in the Public Interest journal. O'Neil contributed a case study about the recall of Rely tampons to the first edition (1983) of Case Studies in Business, Society, and Ethics, edited by Tom Beachamp. When the Asbestos Compensation Committee formed in 1981 to support a bill by then United States Senator Gary Hart, primarily to represent the interests of trial attorneys and asbestos manufacturers, O'Neil consulted with the committee to advocate for former asbestos workers with long term disabling diseases which involved meetings with physicians, insurers, compensation analysts and lawmakers.
Appointed the lowest academic rank - Demonstrator - at the University of Toronto Department of Preventive Medicine & Epidemiology, during the 1970s O'Neil also managed research budgets for the Department in the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. She collaborated on a pioneering medical textbook, Prevention in Clinical Practice with Robert W. Morgan, M.D.
After successfully defending herself against a serial rapist in Florida, O'Neil wrote about the experience for the anthology of women's self-defense reports "Her Wits About Her" published in 1987. Continuing interest in self-defense techniques prompted O'Neil to write about martial arts and to seek training in kickbox and Japanese archery.
Read more about this topic: L. Peat O'Neil
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