I have an experiment for you.

[ThanksMsMay]

Go to google images and type in "human body"

What do you notice?

Yes, there are some ethical issues with trials on drugs of women of child bearing age, of course.
Drug testing is dangerous after all, and it would be disastrous to trial a drug which had similar effects to thalidomide for example, or resulted in sterility.
I see this limiting of women as necessary for the ethics of these trials. I also think it's an unfortunate side effect of protecting women that limits data on them, rather than some conspiracy to exclude them. i.e. it's about protecting women from harm, rather than not caring about our health.
Vestal implied that people only cared about thalidomide effects because it affected male babies. While I agree of course that males are prioritised in our society, I think that's going too far. Of course people care about babies dying and being maimed - irrelevant of gender. Yes, I'm aware of female abortions and infanticide in various regions around the world, but this is Europe 60 years ago or so when these things didn't happen.

I wonder then what the reasons are behind the lack of drug trials on PoC which has caused some serious problems up til now. Is that limited due to some ethical considerations? Maybe going back to Tuskegee and similar?

Femicide has been a feature of almost every culture in every time. While female foetuses weren't specifically aborted 60 yrs ago in Europe, girls were often left unfed and left to die from preventable diseases even in the 1960s. They were also less likely to be educated than their brothers.

"I also think it's an unfortunate side effect of protecting women that limits data on them, rather than some conspiracy to exclude them. i.e. it's about protecting women from harm, rather than not caring about our health."

Can you explain a bit more about this? What are the extra harms that might happen to women that won't happen to men?

Interesting perspective here from a medical professional

Can you explain a bit more about this? What are the extra harms that might happen to women that won't happen to men?

Primarily relating to fertility or effects on the unborn fetus (teratogenic or mutagenic effects) or the effects on a newborn from breastfeeding.
In fact, it doesn't just apply to clinical trials, but general H&S. The H&S at work act includes provision for new and expectant mothers for exactly this reason.

That would exclude new and expectant mothers from these trials. What about women not in that position?

Issues around fertility would presumably apply to men too?

Issues around fertility would presumably apply to men too?

Not in the same way, since a man doesn't gestate so his health can't affect a foetus. I suppose it could affect his sperm, but usually unhealthy sperm doesn't get to fertilise as far as I know (I'm getting out of my knowledge comfort zone here :) ). The legislation and COSHH (control of substances hazardous to health) guidelines do not make any special provisions for men, so I assume not.
Don't forget, women can be pregnant without realising it, if only for a matter of weeks, and it would be disastrous (and a huge scandal) if they were exposed to an agent which caused genetic defects in the period.

Fairly simple to ask women to take a pregnancy test before starting any trials then, or trust them to state if there was any remote possibility that they could be pregnant.

There probably are ways around it AB, in fact there must be for drugs aimed specifically for women.
Having said that, trusting people to state their status wouldn't be enough I don't think.
I found this interesting article, because although I disuputed the claim that medicines aren't tested on women, it's obvious they are rarely tested on pregnant women:
mosaicscience.com/story/pregnancy-testing-drugs
"our efforts to protect women and their fetuses have actually put them both in jeopardy.".
Kind of what I said above; the reasons for not testing are an effort to protect, not exclude.

Oh my god OP I never really comment on the feminism board but this has literally blown my mind. Isn't it funny relatively little things like this just pass you by until someone points it out and then you wonder how it took you so long to notice it! Thank you flowers

@washingmatilda we're actually an alright though slightly hairy bunch definitely get stuck in some time!

Trusting women isn't sufficient? Even if they are explicitly told the risks and asked to be clear that they are not pregnant?

I'm not suggesting testing using pregnant women at all, it seems unethical to me to explicitly test things on unborn babies. I'm talking about testing using women who are of child bearing age, and excluding them on the grounds that they might not know they were pregnant. When you could simply do a pregnancy test, and also state that you are very unlikely to be pregnant (ie single and not sexually active).

Trusting women isn't sufficient? Even if they are explicitly told the risks and asked to be clear that they are not pregnant?

Well, the article I posted seemed to indicate that it was testing on pregnant women which was lacking, not women in general, so maybe that is sufficient?
(Maybe my diversion re: H&S at work was a red herring - there's no risk/reward benefit to allowing potentially pregnant women to work with known harmful chemicals, whereas in a drug trial there is).

Googling 'human evolution' images is just as depressing.

it's obvious they are rarely tested on pregnant women:
mosaicscience.com/story/pregnancy-testing-drugs
"our efforts to protect women and their fetuses have actually put them both in jeopardy.".
Kind of what I said above; the reasons for not testing are an effort to protect, not exclude

Would you agree to test a drug whilst pregnant? I would not have.

I remember realising in Medical School that we were taught the male as the "normal" and the female as the variant , in everything (anatomy/physiology,etc)
I used to flip things the other way round
Eg " The clitoris is like a vestigial penis" becomes "the penis is like an overgrown clitoris"

All foetuses start out as female in form, so actually male is the variant.

Semantically, it''s not that a foetus starts out as female in form, rather that the blastocyst (10 days to implantation) is developed from the X chromosome with maternal RNA developing it further. At six weeks of gestation, the developing gonads have bipotential - so have the capability to differentiate into either testes or ovaries.

As a medical historian, I understand why men still are positioned as the "standard model" from the echoes of Aristotelian medicine. This model explained women as underdeveloped versions of men led to men being considered as the gold standard of health which women's bodies were compared to. If the right conditions in the womb were sought (dry and hot) you would have a male and if it went wrong (cold and wet) you would have a female - the vagina was described as a literal undescended penis because of these unsatisfactory conditions in the womb by Galen. This pervaded until the 19th century, where the emergence of gynaecology as a distinct medical specialism, incorporated this into the medical model, where women's bodies went wrong because that was the inherent part of being female. Psychiatry also develops into a professional, distinct medical specialism during this time that medical historians have themed as the "feminisation of madness"; moving from brutish monstrous imagery of the chained mad man to the female experience of lunacy with diagnoses of every stage of female development e.g. madness of menstruation, lactational insanity, puerperal psychosis, the mad old maid... Descriptions of the menopause see women being rationalised and becoming more like men, becoming rational and logical beings at long last (I still have a long way to go then).

Very interesting regrouted. Of course, in actual fact, women tend to be more physically resilient than men and their life expectancy is significantly higher.

rather that the blastocyst (10 days to implantation) is developed from the X chromosome with maternal RNA developing it further

? Begs the question as to what the genes on the other 31 pairs of chromosomes are doing at this point of development. It beggars belief that only genes on the X chromosomes are being read at the blastocyst stage.

Also Maternal RNA ? - Do you mean the messenger RNA that's kicking around in the egg just prior to the point of fertilisation ? Wouldn't this get diluted quite quickly with the forthcoming rounds of cell division. There simply must be new RNA production based on the new genome or the entire process doesn't make sense - and as you suggest the X chromosome is being read and, in girls, one of those is the paternal chromosome.

31 pairs Cadno?? Where on earth did you get that number from?

mmm...that might be wrong, I thought we had 32 pairs of chromosomes. I'll need to look it up now....

ahhh...we have 23 pairs - got the two digits twisted up. ....so what are the other 22 pairs doing then ?

Perhaps you could use this new-fangled thing called Google Cadno? Especially as you don't trust a mere woman who is an expert in these things to tell you the truth?

Yep, sorry got my '2' and '3' mixed up...