Why don’t doctors trust women? Because they don’t know much about us | Gabrielle Jackson

Why don’t doctors trust women? Because they don’t know much about us | Gabrielle Jackson

Why study women, they're just like men, but worse. - Doctors "Women weren’t included in clinical trials until the 1990s. While we make up 70% of chronic pain patients, 80% of pain medication has been tested only on men. Even in preclinical trials with cell lines and rodents, males have been favoured over females. Researchers have justified this bias by claiming that oestrous cycles in female rodents – and menstrual cycles in human women – would potentially corrupt results. If that were so, wouldn’t it be quite important to find out before selling the drug to women? Eight of the 10 prescription drugs taken off the market by the US Food and Drug Administration between 1997 and 2000 owing to severe adverse effects caused greater health risks in women than men. A 2018 study found this was a result of “serious male biases in basic, preclinical, and clinical research”. Making matters worse, medical students are never taught about this knowledge bias. It just doesn’t come up in medical schools that almost everything we know about human biology comes from the study of men. And maybe, just maybe, the women crowding their waiting rooms – the women who they can’t help – are there not because they’re hysterical or making it up or like being sick or want the attention, but because they are sick and in pain, and medical science has no answers for them."