Why medicine often has dangerous side effects for women

We all go to doctors,

and we do so with trust and blind faith

that the test they are ordering
and the medications they're prescribing

are based upon evidence,

evidence that's designed to help us.

However, the reality is

that that hasn't always
been the case for everyone.

What if I told you that the medical
science discovered over the past century

has been based on
only half the population?

I'm an emergency medicine doctor.

I was trained to be prepared
in a medical emergency.

It's about saving lives.
How cool is that?

Okay, there's a lot of runny noses
and stubbed toes,

but no matter who walks
through the door to the ER,

we order the same tests,

we prescribe the same medication

without ever thinking about
the sex or gender of our patients.

Why would we?

We were never taught that there were
any differences between men and women.

A recent Government Accountability study
revealed that 80 percent of the drugs

withdrawn from the market

are due to side effects on women.

So let's think about that for a minute.

Why are we discovering
side effects on women

only after a drug has been released
to the market?

Do you know that it takes years for a drug

to go from an idea to being tested
on cells in a laboratory,

to animal studies,

to then clinical trials on humans,

finally to go through
a regulatory approval process,

to be available for your doctor
to prescribe to you,

not to mention the millions
and billions of dollars of funding

it takes to go through that process.

So why are we discovering
unacceptable side effects

on half the population
after that has gone through?

What's happening?

Well, it turns out that those cells
used in that laboratory,

they're male cells,

and the animals used
in the animal studies were male animals,

and the clinical trials have been
performed almost exclusively on men.

How is it that the male model became
our framework for medical research?

Let's look at an example that has
been popularized in the media,

and it has to do
with the sleep aid Ambien.

Ambien was released on the market
over 20 years ago,

and since then, hundreds of millions
of prescriptions have been written,

primarily to women because women
suffer more sleep disorders than men.

But just this past year,

the Food and Drug Administration
recommended cutting the dose in half

for women only,

because they just realized
that women metabolize the drug

at a slower rate than men,

causing them to wake up in the morning
with more of the active drug in the system

and then they're drowsy and they're
getting behind the wheel of the car,

and they're at risk
for motor vehicle accidents.

And I can't help but think,
as an emergency physician,

how many of my patients
that I've cared for over the years

that were involved
in a motor vehicle accident

possibly could have been prevented

if this type of analysis was performed
and acted upon 20 years ago

when this drug was first released.

How many other things
need to be analyzed by gender?

What else are we missing?

World War II changed a lot of things,

and one of them was this need
to protect people

from becoming victims of medical research
without informed consent.

So some much-needed guidelines
or rules were set into place,

and part of that was this desire
to protect women of childbearing age

from entering into any
medical research studies.

It was fear, what if something happened
to the fetus during this study?

Who would be responsible.

And so the scientists
at this time actually thought

this was a blessing in disguise,

because let's face it,

men's bodies are pretty homogeneous.