Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    I unfortunately chucked the paper into the recycle, but an article in
    the Rocky Mountain News Sunday magazine by Trisha Flynn had an
    interesting piece of data.  Trisha Flynn is Denver's local Ellen
    Goodman-type columnist.  
    
    Anyway, she had and article on research in medicine and woman.  I don't
    have the exact reference she used, but would you believe there was a
    study done on the connection between obesity and breast and cervical
    cancer done in the eighties.  The study subjects were obese men!!!!
    Trisha explained that while obese men may have breasts, she still
    hasn't seen a man with a cervix.  The NIH's excuse was that women's
    hormones are too complicated.  Ms. Flynn's tart comment, was if that's
    the case why isn't there a male pill if male reproduction hormones are
    less complex.
    
    Meg

    There's a  mixture of real problems and complete nonsense in this,
    and since it is widely repeated, it's worth seperating them.

    Start by  dividing  medical  research  into  4  categories: Female
    diseases   (eg.   cervical  cancer),  Male  diseases(eg.  prostate
    cancer), diseases of both sexes that seem to behave differently in
    the different sexes (eg. heart disease), and disease of both sexes
    that seem to behave similarly in both sexes (eg. appendicitis).

    Assuming the article's numbers are accurate, 13% on the NIH budget
    is  spent  on  the  first  category.  But far less is spent on the
    second.  There's  far  more  research  on  breast  cancer  than on
    prostate cancer. In this area it seems that there is more interest
    in women's health than in men's.

    The real  problem  comes  in  the  third  category.  Most  work on
    diseases  that  affect  both  sexes  has  been done on males for a
    variety  of  reasons.  It's  simpler  not  having  to  worry about
    periodic  hormonal  changes.  There  was  no  need  to worry about
    experimental treatment harming a fetus. It may have been easier to
    get  volunteers. In the case of work with animals, you didn't have
    to  wonder  what effect pregnancies had on the experiment. After a
    while,  there  was  more  data on males, so it's easier to fit new
    information in.

    Obviously there  will  have  to  be  more work done on how disease
    affect  women (as well as more work on exclusively male diseases),
    but  in  the  current  atmosphere  of  cutting  funds for research
    (research  funds  have  been decreasing in constant dollars for 10
    years), I wouldn't hold my breath.

--David

>    The real  problem  comes  in  the  third  category.  Most  work on
>    diseases  that  affect  both  sexes  has  been done on males for a
>    variety  of  reasons.  It's  simpler  not  having  to  worry about
>    periodic  hormonal  changes.
     (...)
>    In the case of work with animals, you didn't have
>    to  wonder  what effect pregnancies had on the experiment.

	I dunno, David, but I call these "excuses", not "reasons".  The
	result of not doing research on women is that you don't KNOW what
	effect menstruation or pregnancy has on the treatment's effectiveness.
	And yet, physicians use these studies to prescribe drugs for
	menstruating, and sometimes even pregnant, women as a matter of
	course... although "it works on rats but we've never tested it with
	humans" is *not* enough to get FDA approval.

	You don't have to wonder if you don't care about knowing.  Isn't
	that really the bottom line?

>    ...  After a
>    while,  there  was  more  data on males, so it's easier to fit new
>    information in.
	(...)
>    Obviously there  will  have  to  be  more work done on how disease
>    affect  women (as well as more work on exclusively male diseases),

	Research involving only male subjects has not traditionally been
	seen as incomplete.  This is perhaps my most compelling reason
	for finding your argument, while in some respects theoretically
	sound, a woefully incorrect representation of reality.
	
>    but  in  the  current  atmosphere  of  cutting  funds for research
>    (research  funds  have  been decreasing in constant dollars for 10
>    years), I wouldn't hold my breath.

	"Yeah", says the cynic in me, "Let's spend the money on lots of 
	research on men, then announce there's none left for the women."
	(Note: it's not going to do any good to flame this remark, which
	is made in the spirit of "just because you're paranoid doesn't
	mean they're not out to get you")

	    Sharon

    Running biological  experiments  is  hard, particularly on people,
    where you can't keep them in a known environment. Trying to reduce
    the number of variables is standard in any experimental set up.

    I'm talking  mainly  about  basic research, where budgets are much
    more  limited  and  the  number of variables one is looking at are
    much larger than drug research.

    The good  news  is  that  a  column  in  the  November "Scientific
    American"  discussing the toxicity of dioxin and related compounds
    does  have  seperated  data for male and female rats, and it turns
    out  that  there is one compound that is toxic to males and not to
    females, and one that is toxic to females and not to males.

--David