Issues that affect both women and men still often tend to affect both in different ways – but the majority of medical research tends to just take what works for the standard male body and apply that to everyone regardless of sex instead of investigating sex-specific effects and tailoring solutions around that
Do you have sources for this claim? Every non-gender specific (i.e. gynecology, prostates, etc.) medical study I have ever read has made it clear that they try to sample as close to an even number of men and women as possible.
I’m making this claim from an American standpoint: A famous example is that fewer girls and women are diagnosed with autism, and those that have been are either profoundly autistic or have had to educate their doctors. Girls are usually socialized differently than boys, so some of the criteria for autism just aren’t a good fit
I want to know where you think clinical criteria come from
Edit: your article describes a study that found research to be dominated by male biology when it was published 2011. This article found a nine year average delay in updating clinical guidelines. People who were in university to be a doctor within the last ten years are likely still operating on older research, unless they have taken the time to stay up to date.
I have a year left on my BS in Biology. There is so much new research coming out that I read, that I know my classmates don’t have the time for. So what we are taught from textbooks is what they learn, and this is a large part of where they get their biases from
That’s fair! From the same perspective, there are significant issues with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders like ADHD and Autism, especially in relation to gender.
But research into that is actively happening, and those issues are specifically recognized and being tackled. Autism in particular was heavily impacted by genuine differences in presentation that naturally reduce the likelihood of social recognition (and therefore reduce the social pressure toward diagnosis):
Studies show that autistic women and female-presenting people have better social awareness, are more likely to engage in reciprocal conversation, have more social motivation for friendships, participate in more group activities, use more nonverbal gestures and pragmatic language, have fewer repetitive/restrictive behaviors, and have more friends than autistic men and male-presenting individuals (Hsiao et al., 2013; Hiller et al., 2014; Rynkiewicz et al., 2016; Parish-Morris et al., 2017; Sedgewick et al., 2016; Dean et al., 2017; Wilson et al., 2016).
Don’t get me wrong, historical research was terrible. And, to this day misdiagnosis and undertreatment is rampant. Women are less likely to receive adequate treatment for pain and are more likely to face delays in various diagnoses, due to almost entirely social influences like male doctors just not believing their patients. Mental health and psychiatric disorders in particular are obviously heavily impacted by that.
But we also only know those things because of modern research. Studies need representational sampling to get through any IRB, and so the majority of medical research starts with men and women from the beginning, reports any differences in the results, and generally keeps trying until it reaches positive clinical outcomes for both.
In the case of Autism, it was recognized that there was a 4:1 men:women diagnostic ratio, and they kept looking at that number until they found possible explanations why.
At the very least I think that the much larger issue is currently on the other end of the equation - if we could get those positive clinical outcomes actually delivered clinically, rather than theoretically.
Issues that affect both women and men still often tend to affect both in different ways – but the majority of medical research tends to just take what works for the standard male body and apply that to everyone regardless of sex instead of investigating sex-specific effects and tailoring solutions around that
Do you have sources for this claim? Every non-gender specific (i.e. gynecology, prostates, etc.) medical study I have ever read has made it clear that they try to sample as close to an even number of men and women as possible.
I’m making this claim from an American standpoint: A famous example is that fewer girls and women are diagnosed with autism, and those that have been are either profoundly autistic or have had to educate their doctors. Girls are usually socialized differently than boys, so some of the criteria for autism just aren’t a good fit
that’s a clinical bias, the person above was asking about a research bias.
edit:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/biomedical-research-sex-male-female-animal-human-studies
as of 2019:
I want to know where you think clinical criteria come from
Edit: your article describes a study that found research to be dominated by male biology when it was published 2011. This article found a nine year average delay in updating clinical guidelines. People who were in university to be a doctor within the last ten years are likely still operating on older research, unless they have taken the time to stay up to date.
I have a year left on my BS in Biology. There is so much new research coming out that I read, that I know my classmates don’t have the time for. So what we are taught from textbooks is what they learn, and this is a large part of where they get their biases from
clinical bias is not necessarily from the criteria. often the clinician is the one introducing the bias all on their own.
That’s fair! From the same perspective, there are significant issues with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders like ADHD and Autism, especially in relation to gender.
But research into that is actively happening, and those issues are specifically recognized and being tackled. Autism in particular was heavily impacted by genuine differences in presentation that naturally reduce the likelihood of social recognition (and therefore reduce the social pressure toward diagnosis):
https://autism.org/women-in-autism/#gender-bias
Don’t get me wrong, historical research was terrible. And, to this day misdiagnosis and undertreatment is rampant. Women are less likely to receive adequate treatment for pain and are more likely to face delays in various diagnoses, due to almost entirely social influences like male doctors just not believing their patients. Mental health and psychiatric disorders in particular are obviously heavily impacted by that.
But we also only know those things because of modern research. Studies need representational sampling to get through any IRB, and so the majority of medical research starts with men and women from the beginning, reports any differences in the results, and generally keeps trying until it reaches positive clinical outcomes for both.
In the case of Autism, it was recognized that there was a 4:1 men:women diagnostic ratio, and they kept looking at that number until they found possible explanations why.
At the very least I think that the much larger issue is currently on the other end of the equation - if we could get those positive clinical outcomes actually delivered clinically, rather than theoretically.
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