Complexity Digest 2002.02 - 02

14-Jan-2002

Yes, Biologically Speaking, Sex Does Matter, The Scientist Bookmark and Share

Excerpts: The goal of the April 2001 IOM [Institute of Medicine , Ed.] report is to promote study of sex differences at the cellular and genetic levels, going beyond the hormonal. One of the report's recommendations is to have the sexes considered as a basic variable at all levels of biomedical and health-related research, instead of a field unto itself. But this can't happen until journals start asking authors to report differences between sexes in their articles, an IOM report recommendation. (...)

In her field of autoimmune diseases, a huge difference exists in the penetrance of disease between men and women.

Editor's Note: It is surprising that in the health related peer reviewed research literature apparently results can be published without controlling for some apparently obvious factors such as the gender of the subjects. Similarly it seem that phase conditions such as the time of the day when a drug is administered are not reported in a publication.