An excellent book on gender bias in diagnosing disease is The Visible Woman edited by Paula Treichler, Lisa Cartwright and Constance Penley. I especially liked the chapter on "The Yentl Syndrome." Here's a quote:
"To document the NIH's failure, the June 18 1990m report included, among other examples, the clinical trial that had demonstrated aspirin's protective effect agains cardiovascular disease without including one woman among its 22,000 subjects (Nadel, 1990)"
I don't know if it is specifically about "diagnosing disease", but it might be able to point you in the right direction.
There was also a recent NPR segment on an article that came out in New England Journal of medicine about (in te US) heart disease being more agressively treated in white males than people of color or women. The article or segment is probably still on the NPR web site, and is in the most recent N.E. Journal.
-christie
>Can anyone on the list point me towards resources that discuss gender bias
>in diagnosing disease (such as heart disease and mental illness) and in the
>prescribing of drugs?
>
>I've heard about a woman who is interested in "genderizing" med school
>curriculum and helping ensure that women are included in clinical drug
>trials but I am having a terrible time finding out information. The majority
>of JAMA and med line sources are about gender differences in physicians, not
>their patients.
>
>Specifically, I am interested in finding out if women tend to receive more
>(or less) prescription drugs for different illnesses than men do. I've heard
>that women are more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders than men
>for similar symptoms and often it's been the preliminary stages of heart
>attacks but I can't seem to find hard data to back this up. Any ideas?
- Gender Bias in Western Medicine Query Sarah Martin
- C H Green
