Dr. Legato has written extensively on coronary artery disease in women and is a leading figure in the movement toward gender-specific clinical practice. This year, we were challenged by the provocative and revolutionary message of our remarkable guest lecturer to rethink goals and strategies for the coming years. We need to focus equally on men and women and explore more fully the ways in which normal human function and pathology vary depending on sex and gender. There are significant differences in the brain activity of men and women.
Food takes twice as long to pass through the digestive system of women compared with that of men.
Despite these and other differences, Legato observed, two-thirds of all research on diseases that affect men and women have been carried out on men. Much more work is needed in order to document differences in illness, risk factors, effective diagnostic techniques and the response to treatment. According to Legato, physicians perceive women differently than they do men and this gender bias leads to different clinical decisions and, often, less aggressive treatment. Dr. Legato called for a shift away from women's health and the commercialization of women's health centers toward a new science and gender-specific medicine that would study and treat men and women side by side according to their gender needs. She addressed this call to academicians at Ben Gurion University in the Negev, health professionals and volunteers at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women, members of the newly established National Council on Women's Health, the Council of Women's Organizations, Arab physicians and nurses at the English Hospital in Nazareth and colleagues from the Women's Heart Center in Ashkelon.