“If you were a young boy, I could have offered you a bouquet of medicines. Unfortunately, for both of us, you are a lovely young girl,” said my daughter’s neurologist, writing out her prescription. And then he began to explain the possible side-effects, some mild, some severe. Exactly three decades ago, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act of 1993 mandated the inclusion of “women and minorities” in clinical trials in a bid to reduce health disparities. Yet, to date, the male model of medicine is thriving, and so is the tendency of treating women as smaller men despite a growing body of research insisting on physiological differences (beyond the reproductive organs) between the sexes. The genetic and epigenetic differences between men and women are also extensively documented.
Generic drugs, trials, mental health
In India, the “pharmacy of the world”, the gender disparity in clinical trials has even bigger implications, thanks to generic drug production and consumption. It has been demonstrated in various studies that women’s bodies respond differently to the components of generic drugs.
