Erectile dysfunction affects 19 percent of the male population and receives five times more research funding than premenstrual syndrome (PMS), which 90 percent of women endure each month.
In addition, 31 percent of women experience severe reproductive or gynecologic problems, yet a narrow 2 percent of publicly funded research is dedicated to female reproductive biology.
In essence, our society is obsessed with erections. Parallel to society’s glorified penis is the historical neglect of women’s health, though I should note that “historical” and “women” are now included in the list of banned words leaked by the National Science Foundation. Scientific breakthroughs through research on men are treated as the gold standard, then generalized and applied to women.
Women have a substantially elevated incidence of adverse reactions to drugs—twice the rate of men—yet they are commonly prescribed equal doses of medication that were clinically tried and tailored for men.
Ancient, all-male medics rarely dissected female cadavers to pioneer women’s healthcare. Discoveries by women and midwives were interpreted by men and inaccurately represented in medical textbooks, leading to medical mansplaining from the very start. The gap in knowledge about women’s health persisted up until the 1990s. The near-exclusive clinical research conducted on men has led to medical practices that inadequately serve women’s bodies and brains.
Women are perpetually left in the dark about their bodily functions and health status because of this failure to comprehensively study women’s health issues. Despite the Revitalization Act of 1993 requiring National Institutes of Health-funded research to include women and minorities in clinical trials, women remain grossly underrepresented. Biological differences—including physiological, metabolic, hormonal, and even cellular variations—aren’t being accounted for in animal and clinical trials, leading to horrifying health disparities.
The gender-specific funding variation can be attributed to the high costs of studying female participants, both in cash and time. Accounting for the cyclically changing hormones of the menstrual cycle and reproductive system in terms of results is neither quick nor cheap. Women’s rights and inclusion in science are not disputed among researchers and doctors, but the added complexity and expense make them less inclined to study female model organisms and, subsequently, women.
Additionally, the demand to produce a high volume of publications in the research community is systematically discouraging, leading to data manipulations or, in some cases, fraudulent findings. The nature of holding a job as a researcher carries the pressure of publishing consistently and often fuels un-nuanced research.
Although this explains why less research is conducted on women, investing in women’s health research is fiscally strategic. Women’s health oversight is economically costly, whereas cinching the health gap could theoretically bolster economic productivity. To be clear, we’re talking about 51 percent of the world’s population leading healthier, higher-quality lives and contributing to the economy. If we prevent the loss of 3.9 billion women to health conditions, absenteeism, or premature death, the global economy can generate at least $1 trillion in annual returns by 2040.
So, what is a reasonable way to tackle the national debt? According to President Donald Trump’s orders, it would be scrapping diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which include women. DEI-related language must now be eliminated in research grant proposals, deeming “woman,” “female,” and “disability” forbidden words. The chaos of recent DEI upending and sequestered research funding welcomes the resurgence of homogenous research participants with male-centered results.
While federal grants and loans have been unilaterally terminated across all medical research, the setbacks are even bleaker women. The “Sex as a Biological Variable (SABV)” policy requiring animal researchers to include females is speculated to have been archived. How this is not a violation of Trump’s executive order recognizing two genders escapes me.
Today’s policies are eerily reminiscent of the years between 1977 and 1993, during which women were barred from participating in the early phases of clinical studies fine-tuning the dosage, safety, and efficacy of a drug. The decision to exclude women with childbearing potential from studies was made in response to concerns following an increase in birth defects among pregnant women who had taken thalidomide, which was prescribed for morning sickness. But what’s today’s excuse? The perpetual barriers to women’s autonomy and decision-making capacity to participate in critical health research compounds the uterine politics following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Without identifying sex-determinants beyond reproductive organs in scientific studies, the data is incomplete. Even today women comprise a smaller percentage of participants in clinical trials of cardiovascular, psychiatric, and cancer therapies, despite representing the majority of the disease-stricken population.
Sex differences encompass the physical, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral. A mixture of genetic and hormonal factors determines a more robust immune system among women, which is attenuated during pregnancy, slower gastrointestinal activity, and susceptibility to illnesses and disorders, just to name a few sex differences.
I’ll ask again: What better way to hinder “ Make America Healthy Again” than purging language used to describe scientific insights and restricting the study of genetic, hormonal, and social influences?
The effects of these “reforms” (anti-diversity executive orders and medical ethics deterrence) on future medical research are hard to quantify. Still, I foresee many aspects of an individual’s identity, such as race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status, being factored out in studies. Consider how labs at BC might be impacted, not only by funding cuts but also by increasingly restrictive eligibility criteria to receive proposal approval. The female body will likely continue to remain one of the greatest mysteries in our penis-centric world and a casualty of the Trump administration.
Women are used to a novel of side effects accompanying their prescriptions, but we certainly did not expect this plot twist.
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