Stanford Medicine magazine reports on sex, gender and medicine

The practice of medicine would be so much simpler if humans came in only one sex — and for most of the past century, doctors and researchers have behaved as if that were the case. Modern medicine is largely based on what works for men. Doctors are mostly men, new treatments are tested mainly on men, medical school teachers are mainly men. Even lab animals are largely male.

This is starting to change, though gradually. In the new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine, you’ll find articles about how the medical world has begun to factor not only sex but gender into teaching, research and care — and why it matters.

“Both sex and gender influence human health and disease,” said Janine Clayton, MD, the director of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, in the article leading off the theme package on sex and gender in medicine. 

“It is increasingly clear that it is both an ethical and scientific imperative to conduct research and report on the results for both men and women,” she added.

One challenge for researchers is simply measuring gender, said Marcia Stefanick, PhD, director of the Stanford Women and Sex Differences in Medicine Center. It’s not as straightforward as most of us think.

“Sex is generally assigned at birth, based on external genitalia, after which a broad range of biological, particularly reproductive, sex differences are assumed. Individuals are then, usually, forced into a binary model of gender — with distinct masculine and feminine categories — when the possibilities are much broader and more expansive,” explained Stefanick, in the same article.

She is part of a team developing a way to place an individual’s gender on a continuum so it can be accurately correlated to health outcomes.

Also in the issue:

• A Q&A with Barbra Streisand about fighting to end discrimination against women in cardiovascular research and care.
• A story about the state of gender diversity among medical-school faculty and strategies to pick up the pace of change.
• An article describing research into the inherent differences in male and female brains.
• A feature about a transgender teen and the care he received at the new Stanford Children’s Health Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Clinic. A video about another transgender teen and his family accompanies the online version of the story.

The issue also includes a story about a researcher who invents “frugal science” tools, like an origami microscope that costs less than $1; and an excerpt from An American Sickness, a new book about the ills of U.S. health care, written by Elisabeth Rosenthal, MD, editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News.

Print copies of the magazine are being sent to subscribers. Others can request a copy at (650) 723-6911 or by sending an email to medmag@stanford.edu.