Let’s get one thing straight: Women aren’t just small men.
But medicine still treats them like they are.
They metabolize drugs differently. They experience symptoms differently. They respond to treatments differently.
And for most of modern medicine’s history? That was treated as inconvenient. So instead of studying it… they excluded it.
Until 1993, women were banned from clinical trials.
Not discouraged. Banned.
Why? Because they had hormones. Because they might get pregnant. Because after thalidomide, ethics boards thought it safer to exclude half the species than figure out how to study them responsibly.
So from the 1960s to the early ’90s, we built modern medicine on a single, lazy assumption:
The male body is standard. The female body? A deviation. A risk. A rounding error.
That assumption has a body count.
Even today, much of cardiology is based on pre-1993 trials—trials that only included men.
So when women get prescribed beta-blockers or ACE inhibitors, the doses are often too high, even when adjusted for weight.
Because no one thought to ask if female metabolism worked differently.
Spoiler: it does.
Women metabolize drugs slower. Have more body fat. Different side effect profiles.
Take Ambien: women were found to have 50% higher blood levels the morning after taking the same dose as men. The FDA didn’t discover that until 20 years after it hit the market—when women started falling asleep at the wheel.
The solution? In 2013, they finally cut the recommended dose for women in half.
And it’s not just the pills. It’s the diagnoses.
Heart disease is the leading killer of women. And yet women are more likely to die from their first heart attack.
Why? Because they don’t have “classic” symptoms. They don’t clutch their left arm. They get nausea. Dizziness. Fatigue. Jaw pain.
I want you to just read that list again - Nausea. Dizziness. Fatigue. Jaw pain. - if this isn't some kind of unfair joke by evolution - I don't know what it. The same list could be any normal Tuesday
But textbooks still teach the Hollywood heart attack—the one that happens to men. So when women show up to the ER?
They’re told it’s stress. Anxiety. Indigestion. Hormones. Nothing to worry about.
They’re seven times more likely to be sent home without a cardiac workup.
SEVEN TIMES!!!!!!!!!!
That’s not just a gap. It’s a death sentence.
This isn’t about feelings. It’s about facts.
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Women are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed after a heart attack.
They're less likely to be given aspirin in hospital.
They're more likely to die within 5 years of that first event.
And they’re twice as likely to experience adverse drug reactions—because trials didn’t test for them.
Not because they’re weaker. Not because they’re later. But because medicine was never built with them in mind.
So let’s say it again:
Women aren’t just small men.
They’re not anomalies. They’re not “atypical.” They’re not medical mysteries.
They’re the other half of the population. And if your data doesn’t fit them?
Then it’s your data that’s broken.
Women are dying, needlessly. And we should be fucking angry.