Good Reads | Labs Are Told to Start Including a Neglected Variable: Females

by by Aaron Logan (from http://www.lightmatter.net/gallery/albums.php) [CC-BY-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

"Labs Are Told to Start Including a Neglected Variable: Females":

For decades, scientists have embarked on the long journey toward a medical breakthrough by first experimenting on laboratory animals. Mice or rats, pigs or dogs, they were usually male: Researchers avoided using female animals for fear that their reproductive cycles and hormone fluctuations would confound the results of delicately calibrated experiments.

That laboratory tradition has had enormous consequences for women.

Read Roni Caryn Rabin's full article at The New York Times here…