10/4/2020 Janice Turner for The Times
'Coronavirus exposes gulf between the sexes
There’s a cruel irony in the fact that men, for all their superior strength, are dying in greater numbers than women'
(extract)
"And in a pandemic that double X is a true blessing: one X chromosome in a cell can spot the invading virus, while the other X works on killing cells that are infected already. With just a single X and a weedier Y, men lack that double-barrelled protection. Moreover, higher levels of testosterone in men, says Dr Moalem, repress the immune system, while oestrogen stimulates it.
How extraordinary that it took Covid-19 to expose the absurdity of an utterly unscientific argument gaining mainstream traction, and posed as recently as the Labour leadership election, that biological sex is not real but an artificial construct, randomly “assigned” to babies at birth. In fact, sex is coded in our very cells and, as this epidemic reveals, can affect our odds for life or death.
Yet despite these stark differences there has been a paucity of sex aggregated data to help fight the virus and find a possible cure. The Lancet argues this week that “obscuring sex and gender differences in treatment and vaccine development could result in harm”. In Invisible Women, the author Caroline Criado Perez exposed how the default patient in medical research is invariably male, as women with their variable hormone levels are thought to skew data. As Dr Moalem writes: “The medical establishment has largely overlooked the profound chromosomal, hormonal and anatomical uniqueness of genetic females.”
Already, The Lancet notes, the lockdown burdens of impoverishment, housework, care for children and the elderly have fallen disproportionately upon women, while there has been a global rise in domestic violence.But the virus itself is killing more men and this male fragility is a terrifying shock."
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