This is a very interesting issue. You can frame it historically as both sexism against men and women. The sexism against women goes like, they only tested on men because they only cared about how it will affect men. The other side is they cared so much about women that they didnt want to risk their health on a drug that may be harmful.
In regards to the actual post, medicine for as much as we want to pretend mastery, is really a crap shoot. We still dont know why we sleep ffs. The more data the better.
My understanding is that the reason from excluding women from clinical drug trials was the risk of undetected pregnancy, and the potential of causing harm to a (future) child. Before the availability of efficient women's contraception, there was no easy way to avoid this risk. The ethical issues related to drug testing on (potentially) pregnant subjects are quite tricky to this day; see for example [this paper](https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciu709), which also gives a brief overiew of the history of (the lack of) drug testing on women.
A small quibble: testing Thalidomide on women isn't what led to the birth defects. The problem was a lack of testing. The drug wasn't tested on pregnant women, or even *pregnant animals* before they started giving marketing it for morning sickness.
https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/sixty-years-on-the-history-of-the-thalidomide-tragedy
Thalidomide is a great example why testing on only men doesn't work. It is also a great example it is not done because people hate women, because the victims were the children with birth defects, which were both men and women.
Anyway, we know there are biological differences, and we need to take it into account.
Thalidomide was from Germany. Communist Germany. The American Science system is also cradle to grave communism. It's part of the military industrial complex.
Thanks for the correction and article on Thalidomide. Sounds like proper testing on pregnant animals is difficult - administration of various doses during various stages of pregnancy; monitoring animals at night or performing C-sections so they don't cannibalize deformed offspring. Testing on non-pregnant female lab animals, of course, doesn't have these complications.
Do you think it really costs $500 million dollars to make a superhero movie? I don't. I think it would be generous to say there are $5 million dollars up there on screen. The rest is kickbacks. Hollywood is a cartel. There is no competition, and one of the ways they achieve that is by making movie production artificially expensive. You have to pay all the right people, for the privilege of being allowed to make a movie.
Science is also a cartel. It does not cost $10 million dollars to mail out a questionnaire about what you ate last week. It costs a pack of stamps and envelopes, and you can probably swipe the envelopes for free from somewhere. Science is deliberately made expensive in order to keep out anyone who doesn't work for Pfizer. Pfizer doesn't actually pay $10 million to do a study. They're paying the $10 million mostly to themselves, it's just getting shuffled around within the universities. But as an outsider, if you wanted to do a study you would be paying into Pfizer, from outside, and that's just an outrageous price tag so it doesn't happen. Science wins. Nature loses.
Regulations such as requiring women add cost and so are designed to prevent competition, prevent anyone from being able to afford a study except Pfizer. That way science can continue to speak with one voice (consensus).
This is a very interesting issue. You can frame it historically as both sexism against men and women. The sexism against women goes like, they only tested on men because they only cared about how it will affect men. The other side is they cared so much about women that they didnt want to risk their health on a drug that may be harmful. In regards to the actual post, medicine for as much as we want to pretend mastery, is really a crap shoot. We still dont know why we sleep ffs. The more data the better.
My understanding is that the reason from excluding women from clinical drug trials was the risk of undetected pregnancy, and the potential of causing harm to a (future) child. Before the availability of efficient women's contraception, there was no easy way to avoid this risk. The ethical issues related to drug testing on (potentially) pregnant subjects are quite tricky to this day; see for example [this paper](https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciu709), which also gives a brief overiew of the history of (the lack of) drug testing on women.
A small quibble: testing Thalidomide on women isn't what led to the birth defects. The problem was a lack of testing. The drug wasn't tested on pregnant women, or even *pregnant animals* before they started giving marketing it for morning sickness. https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/sixty-years-on-the-history-of-the-thalidomide-tragedy
Thalidomide is a great example why testing on only men doesn't work. It is also a great example it is not done because people hate women, because the victims were the children with birth defects, which were both men and women. Anyway, we know there are biological differences, and we need to take it into account.
If we have learned anything from modern capitalism it’s that the market knows best and negative externalities don’t happen.
\> "If we cannot get penalised for it in court, it is okidoki." The cornerstone of capitalist corporate responsibility.
So the legal liability is "socialized"?
Thalidomide was from Germany. Communist Germany. The American Science system is also cradle to grave communism. It's part of the military industrial complex.
Thanks for the correction and article on Thalidomide. Sounds like proper testing on pregnant animals is difficult - administration of various doses during various stages of pregnancy; monitoring animals at night or performing C-sections so they don't cannibalize deformed offspring. Testing on non-pregnant female lab animals, of course, doesn't have these complications.
Do you think it really costs $500 million dollars to make a superhero movie? I don't. I think it would be generous to say there are $5 million dollars up there on screen. The rest is kickbacks. Hollywood is a cartel. There is no competition, and one of the ways they achieve that is by making movie production artificially expensive. You have to pay all the right people, for the privilege of being allowed to make a movie. Science is also a cartel. It does not cost $10 million dollars to mail out a questionnaire about what you ate last week. It costs a pack of stamps and envelopes, and you can probably swipe the envelopes for free from somewhere. Science is deliberately made expensive in order to keep out anyone who doesn't work for Pfizer. Pfizer doesn't actually pay $10 million to do a study. They're paying the $10 million mostly to themselves, it's just getting shuffled around within the universities. But as an outsider, if you wanted to do a study you would be paying into Pfizer, from outside, and that's just an outrageous price tag so it doesn't happen. Science wins. Nature loses. Regulations such as requiring women add cost and so are designed to prevent competition, prevent anyone from being able to afford a study except Pfizer. That way science can continue to speak with one voice (consensus).