The surprising reason medicine tends to work better for men than women.
Yet another reason why we need more equality.

Even the medical field has bias.
Men.
We have it pretty good. Especially when it comes to our health.
Not only do we get to write the health care legislation, but increasingly, we're getting all the good medical treatment.
We can thank lab animals for this — and the researchers who study them.
For a long time, researchers believed that male animals were better for trials of new medicine.
It was widely assumed that hormone cycles in females would screw up the results.
As a result, currently, over 75% of all lab animals are male.
Lab mouse in a surgically gloved hand.
Image by Rama/Wikimedia Commons/CeCILL.
The problem is, when you test primarily on male animals, you're making medicine that's more likely to be effective for, well, men.
According to a report in New Scientist, researcher Natasha Karp and a team from the U.K.'s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute studied tens of thousands of mice of both sexes. They found that when you switch off genes in male mice, the mice express different traits then when you switch off the same genes in female mice.
If genes express themselves differently depending on the sex of the animal, the researchers found, so do some genetic diseases.
Gene therapy: rad as hell.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on UnsplashThe team concluded that "drugs optimized for male animals may be less effective in females, or even cause harm." Of the 10 drugs that were pulled from the market between 1997 and 2001, they explained, eight were riskier for women.
Male animal-bias also means drugs that work better for women might not even make it into testing to begin with.
As with the debate over what constitutes an "essential" health care benefit (according to some hi-larious U.S. senators, mammograms shouldn't), when it comes to "who constitutes a full human," it appears men are the considered default setting, while women are an afterthought.
A bearded man looking off into the distance all manly.
Photo by Jakob Owens on UnsplashIt's a pretty sweet gig for us men.
The thing is, women are half of us. We like them.
As fully formed human beings with lives, free will, hopes, dreams, and so on, it'd be nice if medicine worked better on them when they got diseases.
There's been some progress toward making medical experiments more equitable, at least where human subjects are concerned.
Clinical trials (on humans) used to involve pretty much no women. Now most are 30-40% female, though that still means women are underrepresented.
Thanks to efforts of researchers like Karp and her team, we now know we need to extend that progress to the animal kingdom as well.
"Unless there’s a really good reason not to, we should be using both sexes in biomedical research," Karp told New Scientist.
Male animals, she argued, have traits just as particular as female hormone cycles that make them similarly varied from an ideal "norm."
Ultimately, more comprehensive research benefits us all — men and women.
Better studies lead to more effective medicine, which leads to less sickness and sadness all around.
That's the hope anyway.
The animals of both genders who turn out to help us out with this project deserve a hearty "thank you."
If we start with equal treatment, we might finally get some equal treatment.
This article originally appeared on 06.29.17
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There's a reason why some people can perfectly copy accents, and others can't
Turns out, there's a neurodivergent link.
A woman in black long sleeve shirt stands in front of mirror.
Have you ever had that friend who goes on vacation for four days to London and comes back with a full-on Queen's English posh accent? "Oooh I left my brolly in the loo," they say, and you respond, "But you're from Colorado!" Well, there are reasons they (and many of us) do that, and usually it's on a pretty subconscious level.
It's called "accent mirroring," and it's actually quite common with people who are neurodivergent, particularly those with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). According Neurolaunch, the self-described "Free Mental Health Library," "Accent mirroring, also known as accent adaptation or phonetic convergence, is the tendency to unconsciously adopt the accent or speech patterns of those around us. This linguistic chameleon effect is not unique to individuals with ADHD, but it appears to be more pronounced and frequent in this population."
Essentially, when people have conversations, we're constantly "scanning" for information—not just the words we're absorbing, but the inflection and tone. "When we hear an accent, our brains automatically analyze and categorize the phonetic features, prosody, and intonation patterns," writes Neurolaunch. For most, this does result in copying the accent of the person with whom we're speaking. But those with ADHD might be more sensitive to auditory cues. This, "coupled with a reduced ability to filter out or inhibit the impulse to mimic…could potentially explain the increased tendency for accent mirroring."
While the article explains further research is needed, they distinctly state that, "Accent mirroring in individuals with ADHD often manifests as an unconscious mimicry of accents in social situations. This can range from subtle shifts in pronunciation to more noticeable changes in intonation and speech rhythm. For example, a person with ADHD might find themselves unconsciously adopting a Southern drawl when conversing with someone from Texas, even if they’ve never lived in the South themselves."
People are having their say online. On the subreddit r/ADHDWomen, a thread began: "Taking on accents is an ADHD thing?" The OP shares, "My whole life, I've picked up accents. I, myself, never noticed, but everyone around me would be like, 'Why are you talking like that??' It could be after I watched a show or movie with an accent or after I've traveled somewhere with a different accent than my 'normal.'
They continue, "Apparently, I pick it up fast, but it fades out slowly. Today... I'm scrolling Instagram, I watch a reel from a comedian couple (Darcy and Jeremy. IYKYK) about how Darcy (ADHD) picks up accents everywhere they go. It's called ADHD Mirroring??? And it's another way of masking."
(The OP is referring to Darcy Michaels and his husband Jeremy Baer, who are both touring comedians based in Canada.)
Hundreds of people on the Reddit thread alone seem to relate. One comments, "Omfg I've done this my whole life; I'll even pick up on the pauses/spaces when I'm talking to someone who is ESL—but English is my first language lol."
Sometimes, it can be a real issue for those around the chameleon. "I accidentally mimicked a waitress's weird laugh one time. As soon as she was out of earshot, my family started to reprimand me, but I was already like 'oh my god I don’t know why I did that, I feel so bad.'"
Many commenters on TikTok were shocked to find out this can be a sign of ADHD. One jokes, "Omg, yes, at a store the cashier was talking to me and she was French. She's like 'Oh are you French too? No, I'm not lol. I'm very east coast Canada."
And some people just embrace it and make it work for them. "I mirror their words or phrase! I’m 30. I realized I start calling everyone sweetie cause my manager does & I work at coffee shop."