Look at the numbers, they say. Latest NIH figures show that more than 65 percent of participants in studies in 1998 were women. Of 6,947 studies supported by NIH that year, nearly 6,000 included both men and women. In testing a new drug, it's important to know if men and women respond differently. A new Glaxo-Wellcome drug for irritable bowel syndrome, for example, has been proven very effective for women, but not for men.
Drugs also trigger different side effects.
From the laboratory to the bedside, the sex winds in medicine are changing. That's why sex-based research is making headlines. The women's health movement has already accomplished much. Gone are the bad old days when women were simply left out of clinical research, and men were used as the generic model of a human being. That study was done using men only.