On Jan. 13, in response to President Trump's order for federal agencies to dismantle webpages that included "gender ideology extremism," the National Institutes of Health removed or made unavailable all pages that mention sex as a biological variable. Agencies have discouraged researchers from using certain words considered "woke" by the Trump administration, and they have flagged funding proposals for review based on whether the proposals include any of the words on a long list, The New York Times reported. As a result, opponents of sex and gender studies in science may think they've successfully done away with "gender ideology."
But they've done a lot more than that. The impact of sex as a biological variable is far more subtle and pervasive than it may seem. In fact, sex-based differences with implications for our health exist even at the very "sciencey"-seeming level of cell and molecular biology. By censoring or defunding work that mentions sex as a biological variable, research on pretty much all cell biology relevant to human health is now at risk. That's because sex — and gender roles, too —permeates all the way down to the most unreproductive of cell types. If you want to do science about animals including humans, sex as a biological variable is a factor you simply cannot ignore. Studies of cancer treatments, for example, or Alzheimer's disease or drug safety or heart attack risk are all topics at risk in the current war on sex differences research.
