The Guardian view on bias in medical research: disregard for women’s health belongs in the past | Editorial
SYears after the best -selling Caroline Krevo Perez book Non -visual women The attention of collective readers drew attention to the long history of sexual bias in medical research, women and their diseases are still represented by an imperfect representative in clinical experiences. Analysis by the guardian The data collected for a new study showed that from 2019 to 2023, 282 experiments that included only male topics were presented for organizational approval in the United Kingdom – compared to 169 focusing on women.
Health inequality is a complex and multi -faceted problem. There are huge social social differences in Average life expectancy and Infant mortalityAs well as the inequality of race – for example, in maternity and Mental illness. These clashes and others can also be set, as well as those related to disability, geographically.
Women live, on average, for a longer period of men, so it can be said that men are deprived. But in addition to the risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth, many women suffer from dementia, while survival rates of female and male cancer- and other diseases that affect both sexes differently- Very variable.
The five -year period in this study, which was carried out by the University of Liverpool and the Organizational Agency for Health Care (MHRA), was not necessarily typical. It does not reveal how the financing is divided. But taking these warnings on these warnings, it is difficult to see a benign interpretation of the existence 67 % experiments Investigate men’s health. This gap is expected to contribute to the search inputs reasonably to contrast the results at the bottom of the line.
This is more disappointing given the recent progress in treating women’s exclusion from health research. For decades, as Mrs. Creedo Perez and others have documented, many clinical trials have been on male themes only. The researchers preferred to avoid what they consider complications related to the reproductive system of females, especially pregnancy – although experts are now looking I was wrong.
Ninety percent of the UK experiences in the MHRA study included both sexes. This cannot be compared specifically with previous practice, as the data has not been examined in the same way before. However, the increasing recognition of the changing effects of medicines on males and females led to the organizers and those who are funded to change their policies. In the United States, National Institutes of Health Investigators have been asked to consider sex as a variable since 2016. In the United Kingdom, the Medical Research Council has changed its rules in 2022. Since then, experiments that have been on animals have been expected to include both sexes – with limited exceptions (such as when the condition that is studied only one sex affects only).
The lack of medical research on pregnant women came in the foreground during the epidemic, when many were Non -fortified and Anxious numbers It ended in intensive care. Frequency in Test medications on pregnant women It is often associated with Thretomide The sixties scandal, when thousands of children were damaged by a drug that gave their mothers to morning diseases. But although caution may deserve, among pregnant women themselves as well as researchers, there is no shortage of women who are not pregnant. Discipline in sex research indicates a bias of female control. All ministers, financiers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical industry should be concerned.
