Medical Side Effects on Women

Guest: Alyson McGregor, MD, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Brown University, Director for the Division of Sex and Gender in Emergency Medicine, Attending Physician at Rhode Island Hospital, Co-founder of the Sex and Gender Women’s Health Collaborative When your doctor says, something like “this medicine has been shown to work well in 60% of patients,” you probably think – “Well, hey, I’ve got a pretty good chance it’ll work well for me.” But, now let’s say you’re a woman and the doctor said, “this medicine has been shown to work well in 60% of men.” Then you’d be thinking – yeah, and…what about women? And here’s the thing – your doctor probably won’t have the answer. Because, drugs are mainly tested on men – or cells that came from men. It’s been that way for decades, but there is growing interest in addressing “gender blindness” in the drug mark