We’ve all taken risks — tried things and people we weren’t sure of and chalked it up to experimentation. It’s all part of being a liberated woman. But sadly we’re are missing out on some of the most important testing that is actually guaranteed to give us what we need: clinical trials. Research has shown that gender can truly affect a medication’s ability to work on such widespread health issues as depression and lung cancer. Despite the growing need for a pool of available and even in some cases, healthy women, a mere 9% of test subjects are female. So, many drugs are being prescribed without ever being tested on a lady. To alleviate this dilemma, the rules for clinical tests changed in 1993 to always include women who still intended to bear children. However, a decade and a half later, not much more has changed. Scientists blame everything from lack of time to lack of awareness; 93% of women surveyed said they had never even been asked to participate in a clinical trial. Keep reading »
