+
Science

Why is some medicine less effective on women? Over 75% of lab animals are male.

More comprehensive research benefits us all — men and women.

research, animal testing, gender, health
Image via Pixabay.

A female lab technician at work.

This article originally appeared on 06.29.17


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.

animal research, studies, gender bias, disease

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.

At least, that's what a recent study found.

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.

drugs, health, politics, community

Gene therapy: rad as hell.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

The 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.

equal rights, equal representation, experiments, medical advancements

A bearded man looking off into the distance all manly.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

It'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.

@penslucero/TikTok

Pency Lucero taking in the Northern Lights

Seeing the northern lights is a common bucket list adventure for many people. After all, it ticks a lot of boxes—being a dazzling light show, rich historical experience and scientific phenomenon all rolled into one. Plus there’s the uncertainty of it all, never quite knowing if you’ll witness a vivid streak of otherworldly colors dance across the sky…or simply see an oddly colored cloud. It’s nature’s slot machine, if you will.

Traveler and content creator Pency Lucero was willing to take that gamble. After thorough research, she stumbled upon an Airbnb in Rörbäck, Sweden with an actual picture of the northern lights shining above the cabin in the listing. With that kind of photo evidence, she felt good about her odds.

However, as soon as she landed, snow began falling so hard that the entire sky was “barely visible,” she told Upworthy. Martin, the Airbnb host, was nonetheless determined to do everything he could to ensure his guests got to see the spectacle, even offering to wake Lucero up in the middle of the night if he saw anything.

Then one night, the knock came.

Keep ReadingShow less
All photos courtesy of The Coca-Cola Company

Behind the Scenes Making Recycled Records with Mark Ronson

True

You’re walking down the sidewalk, earbuds in, listening to your favorite hip-hop beats. As your head bobs to the sounds, the sun warms your back. It’s a perfect day.

When the chorus hits, the empty Sprite bottle in your hand becomes a drumstick, passing traffic becomes a sea of concertgoers, and the concrete beneath your feet is suddenly a stage. Spinning on your heels, you close out the song with your face to the sky and hands in the air.

Keep ReadingShow less
via YouTube

These days, we could all use something to smile about, and few things do a better job at it than watching actor Christopher Walken dance.

A few years back, some genius at HuffPo Entertainment put together a clip featuring Walken dancing in 50 of his films, and it was taken down. But it re-emerged in 2014 and the world has been a better place for it.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Daughter shares incredible 3D optical illusions painted by her father, who has aphasia

David Hollowell suffered from a traumatic brain injury in 2021, losing his ability to speak. Remarkably, he is still able to express himself through art.

@david.hollowell/TikTok

David Hollowell pictured with his 3D art

For a little over three decades, David Hollowell’s professional life had been dedicated to art. In addition to working as an art professor, his highly acclaimed 3D illusion paintings were shown in prestigious exhibits. In 2018, the 71-year-old began taking his talents to a larger scale, turning his family barn into an immersive mural.

Then, in May of 2021, Hollowell fell off the roof of his home, resulting in a traumatic brain injury leading to aphasia, a disorder that affects a person’s ability to communicate through speech or written language.

Though Hollowell couldn’t access words the way he used to, his ability to paint detailed, mesmerizing images remained remarkably intact. And his daughter-slash-self-appointed-TikTok manager, Adrienne, is determined to share his work and his journey with as many people as possible.

Keep ReadingShow less

An Australian woman thinks it's rude that Americans don't say, "You're welcome."

There’s been a growing trend amongst American Gen Zers and millennials to stop saying, “You're welcome,” after being thanked. Older generations may think the change is part of a more significant trend of younger people having more lax manners, but in actuality, younger people believe that giving a simple “OK” or “Mm-hmm” after being thanked is more polite than saying, “You're welcome.”

Recently, Australian TikTok user Tilly Hokianga vented her frustrations with Americans in a viral post entitled, “Things That Send Me as an Australian Living in the US.” A lot of the points she made were pretty typical for someone visiting the United States, such as there's too much sugar in the bread and too many options for cereal.

However, she also noted that Americans have difficulty saying, “You’re welcome.”

Keep ReadingShow less

Meteorologist Matt Laubham prays for the people in the path of a deadly tornado.

Broadcasters who have to report on tragedies as they are happening have a tough job. On the one hand, they have to maintain their professionalism and inform the public of what's happening in a factual way. On the other hand, they're still human and sometimes humanity trumps the traditional perception of what's "professional."

Such was the case for WTVA meteorologist Matt Laubhan, who found himself live on the air staring at a radar scan of a deadly tornado as it moved towards the small town of Amory, Mississippi. He, more than anyone, understood the severity of the situation, and he did his best to convey that to his viewers.

"This is a strong, life-threatening tornado that's going to move either extremely close to Amory or in through the northern part of the city of Amory."

He added, "Y'all trust me too much," explaining that people sometimes take his predictions of where the tornado will go as hard fact, but the reality is that tornados can change directions at any time. "So Amory, we need to be in our tornado safe place," he said.

Keep ReadingShow less