Why have women’s health issues historically been ignored within the medical profession?

Leif Serabia: here is an extract from a study called: "The Patriarchal System: The Exclusion of Women in Medical Case Studies""A major example of gender bias has been the virtual absence of female participants in clinical trials involving drug research and experiments in advanced medical technology. Androcentric medicine insists that biological differences between men and women have major, inescapable health consequences, but then routinely conducts research using only male subjects. Male is the medical norm. Consider a federally funded study which examined the effects of diet on breast cancer. Only men were used as sample subjects. (Tavris, 1996). What is known about the natural history of diseases and their treatment in men is inapplicable to women. Evidence suggests that gender bias has flawed some medical research. This bias in research extends to areas such as lack of analysis of study results by gender, scarcity of interdisciplinary research, inadequate funding ! for research on diseases primarily affecting women, and lack of female researchers (Giudice, 1991: Keville, 1993). In countering these trends there also needs to be the recognition that when women are used as research subjects, they are likely to be white and middle class (Rothman and Caschetta, 1995). The interplay of race and class in particular must be accounted for to make findings applicable to a diverse population of women. Research on heart disease and AIDS are notable examples where exclusion of women in clinical trials are ominous. Two widely publicized studies on the effect of low doses of aspirin and the risk of heart attack were conducted using study samples of 12,866 general subjects and 22,071 physicians, respectively. All subjects in both studies were male ( Rosser, 1994). The reduced heart attack risk that emerged from this research was considered so spectacular that the public was made aware of the potential results before the findings were published. Th! ese findings cannot be generalized to women, in part because t! he role of estrogen needs to be considered. "There are others. Just google Sexism in Medicine....Show more

Jene Kostyla: I'm not sure, but I guess that explains women's lower life expectancy. ...oh, wait...

Claude Gloden: Retart

Alecia Kaehler: WHy does breast cancer research get more funding than prostate cancer.You are very ignorant.

Seema Hosfeld: Really guys? This is a question I have for my college level Women Gender Studies course.. It's apparent some of you haven't been to college? Seems there is only one person on here who has any knowledge on women's gender studies here.

Shelley Stevens: Yes

Scot Rotruck: You have GOT to be kidding me!

Talisha Digrande: Women's cancer research gets notably more funding than men's cancer researchUnder Obamcare there are 8 mandated free services for women, none for men.There are a few women's health care agencies, none for men.Yep, - that's ignoring women's health issues all right....Show mo! re