Is there still a gender gap in medical research?
4/14/202613 min
When you go to the doctor’s office, your doctor has to figure out which treatment is best for you. Physicians rely on medical research and clinical trials to make sure those treatments are safe and effective. But that research has not always been inclusive, which impacts patient care. Women and people of color were only required to be included in medical trials funded by the NIH starting in 1993. Now, studies are more inclusive – but how we study sex and gender in research is still controversial. In this episode, we unpack how medicine sorts the sexes – and why it’s not as simple as it seems.
If you liked this episode, check out our previous one unpacking biological sex.
Interested in more science behind medicine? Email us your questions at shortwave@npr.org.
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This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Kwesi Lee was the audio engineer.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Aru Nair· Co-host0:14
[shortwave music] You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.
Emily Kwong· Host0:19
Hey, Short Wavers. Emily Kwong here with Short Wave's intern, Aru Nair.
Aru Nair· Co-host0:25
Hi, Emily.
Emily Kwong· Host0:26
Hi. And Angela Zhang, who has joined our team through the Stanford Health Equity Media Fellowship and is an actual doctor.
Angela Zhang0:33
Hey, Emily. It's so good to be here.
Emily Kwong· Host0:35
Good to have you. Now, Aru, I hear you have a medical fact you wanted to share with us.
Aru Nair· Co-host0:39
So, Emily, did you know that it wasn't mandatory to include women in medical trials funded by the National Institutes of Health until 1993?
Emily Kwong· Host0:49
Wait. Medical trials like drug trials?
Angela Zhang0:51
Yeah, partially. And these trials are really important. The NIH is the largest single public funder of biomedical research- Yeah ... in the world. Like, I'm a doctor, right? So I'm constantly looking at results of research on different drugs or treatments, and this helps me decide if a test or medicine I'm using is safe or effective for my patients.
Emily Kwong· Host1:10
And you're saying it wasn't mandatory for women to be included in those until the 1990s?
Angela Zhang1:15
Yeah. We probably need some backstory here. [pensive music] So there was this global scandal starting in the late 1950s where tens of thousands of pregnant women, mainly in Europe, took this sedative called thalidomide for morning sickness.
Emily Kwong· Host1:27
Okay.
Aru Nair· Co-host1:27
People who took the drug while pregnant ended up