Use of male mice skews drug research against women, study finds | Hacker News Reader

Use of male mice skews drug research against women, study finds

theguardian.com

50 pointsbem9463 comments

This article was written by someone who obviously has little knowledge how drugs are actually discovered and developed.

First, as someone already pointed out, mouse models kind of suck. They are very different than humans, so adding in female mice isn't really going to tell you a whole lot.

Second, a core tenet of research is to minimize your variables. Adding in female mice (who go through estrus cycles) is probably going to mess up your results and make them even harder to interpret. Plus, you'd have to double the size of your study to maintain statistical power.

Third, once a drug passes into human testing, females are already included in research (unless it's a purely male disease). So we're not really missing anything here. If a drug company did limit testing to males, the FDA would take them to task and probably limit their use in males only. Why would a drug company want to cut off half of their potential customers.

What a terrible article overall.

As /u/tqi pointed out elsewhere, there have been several rubbish Guardian science pieces on the front page in the last few days:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20040897

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20035473

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034411

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20026454

This happens fairly regularly, not just in the last few days.

I know HN has a list of domains that get auto-downweighted, if not auto-killed. The Guardian should be on there if it's not already.

It is, like most other major media websites. It's a small downweight, and there are several ways it can get overriden.

(who go through estrus cycles) Fifty percent of the drug recipients will go through estrus cycles. Isn't that materially important knowledge about drug interactions we need to know about? If a drug affects the estrus cycle, or was affected by the estrus cycle, wouldn't women want to know about that?

At the mouse model stage? No, it's not important to know about that. And trying to capture that information at that stage is likely going to give you even more inconclusive data.

Adding in female mice (who go through estrus cycles) is probably going to mess up your results and make them even harder to interpret.

The article and its linked sources address this point, citing two meta-analyses regarding mice and rats in neuroscience:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24456941

"The underrepresentation of female mice in neuroscience and biomedical research is based on the assumption that females are intrinsically more variable than males and must be tested at each of four stages of the estrous cycle to generate reliable data. Neither belief is empirically based. [...] Utilization of female mice in neuroscience research does not require monitoring of the estrous cycle."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27468347

"Across all traits, there were no sex differences in trait variability, as indicated by the CV, and there were no sex differences in any of the four neuroscience categories, even in instances in which mean values for males and females were significantly different. Female rats were not more variable at any stage of the estrous cycle than male rats."

The key in your sources is neuroscience. I can believe there is no impact of sex on those results, but there can be a number of different therapeutic areas where it does impact things.

Also, unless you have evidence that sex has no effect, as a scientist you'd want to be cautious and keep your variables to a minimum. Easiest way to do that is have all mice of the same sex.

sometimes I read an article, like this one, that has a sound basis in science, look at the headline, look at where its published, think about the target audience that will read the article, and can't help but question the "why" that article was published.

Is there any reason at all to publish an article about the gender of research mice in the Guardian except to push some kind of political gender agenda?

I ask specifically because of the article's last 4 paragraphs. They are so laden with gender agenda it kind of blows my mind.

I'm at odds with your assertion, to me they sound like the kind of "in-fighting" I have come to expect when discussing /anything/ regarding sex. If you treat one as an "other" then you're a pariah, but equally if you do not then whatever gender is chosen becomes the defacto standard anyway.

The take-away for me is that science shouldn't be interesting in listening to those who enjoy politicking.

The last four paragraphs, taken out of context for the benefit of people who won't read the article first and wonder what the parent is talking about:

> She is also concerned about the approach taken by some research teams in the US which incorporate both sexes in experiments by working things out in males first and then repeating it in females. “It perpetuates the dated, sexist and scientifically inaccurate idea that male brains are a standard from which female brains deviate,” she said.

> Ironically, Shansky said, the ways in which the male and female brains differ may have remained under-investigated due to a backlash against the idea of there being meaningful differences between the male and female brain.

> “There’s a concern that research that shows sex differences in the brain will be weaponised by misogynists or used to justify and promote inequality,” she said. “It’s up to scientists to make sure that the message of those studies is not conveyed in a comparative way that adds any value. It doesn’t have to be a competition, it’s not about being better, it’s just about saying this is how things works.

> “There’s nothing anti-feminist about saying the neurobiology in the female brain might be different.”

Well the thing is what separates an agenda from being political or not is how normalized it is - not how right or wrong it is factually or morally. Pointing out AIDS is from a virus was once "political" because it undermined their "decadent lifestyles are to blame" beliefs.

The non-cynical why is to highlight how stupid issues of humans are harming research quality in a way that could put human health at risk. The cynical why is because it gets them clicks and both options aren't mutually exclusive.

Does the site have an agenda about the topic?

Or is their agenda about clicks?

I feel like the second is more likely. Most science news is ultra click bait stuff. I suspect this is no different.

More places need science editors who are a bit more thoughtful. IMO it's possible to pull in the clicks... but provide context and educate as well.

They are left leaning according to mediabiasfactcheck and gender discrimination is a heavily politicized topic. Their agenda is also about clicks; gender discrimination claims will generate more clicks than a science article

I don't really trust any given site to determine "left" or "right" what is even left or right in any given state, country, or whatever is not nearly as consistent as a lot of rating sites seem to think.

They might be right, I'm just not inclined to belive any of those sites.

How about https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/0... Which presents the left/right perspective in a much better way, as you can see by the graph - it's not just a binary pigeon-hole.

Then their is wiki - a crowd-sourced perspective: "the paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion, and its reputation as a platform for liberal and left-wing editorial has led to the use of the "Guardian reader" and "Guardianista" as often-pejorative epithets for those of left-leaning or "politically correct" tendencies."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian

But this whole right/left labeling has got silly and used as a means to label and dismiss the subject/debate at hand. It's a whole sliding scale and as always it is the extreme edges of both the left and the right that are the real issue. But alas many will label something left or right and project that edge-case upon all on the divide, however close to the center they may be.

It seems pretty rational and interesting to me that a persistent bias in the gender or research bias continues and amplifies a persistent bias in whom drugs are best serving.

Do you have an “anti-gender” agenda where you wish that gender is not discussed?

> It seems pretty rational and interesting to me that a persistent bias in the gender or research bias continues and amplifies a persistent bias in whom drugs are best serving.

Rat studies aside, the reason there is more drug testing data on men is in large part because of the government testing drugs on gays, pacifists, soldiers, prisoners, etc. without their knowledge of consent.

I'm sure those things are interesting; however, you don't learn about them by cherrypicking sources and studies to suit a particular agenda. In particular, by challenging TFA's overt agenda pushing, the parent isn't advocating a different agenda (except perhaps for more objective science journalism).

I think poorly disguised advocacy journalism has become the defacto journalism in the U.S., especially at outlets like the guardian. And for whatever reason, [advocacy] journalists lean heavily left.

Use of mice skews drug research against humans also. Not that I want to use drugs on humans. But you have to wonder how many drugs there are that work on humans but not mice.

We are on the quest to achieve mice immortality!

Douglas Adams has taught me the truth!

I don't think you have to wonder, it's been widely reported that cancer has been cured in mice dozens, if not hundreds of times.

> ...the ways in which the male and female brains differ may have remained under-investigated due to a backlash against the idea of there being meaningful differences between the male and female brain.

This is bad. Contemporary views affecting scientific research is not a good direction to go. The religious, dark-ageesque nature of the above statement is obvious: It's a fight against attempts to undermine a comfortable preconceived idea.

I believe, similar to the famous quote about free-speech[0], that we must fight for science to have free-reigns in it's research directions even if we don't like the premise or the possible outcomes. Nothing should be off-limits in the pursuit of (a close approximation of) the truth.

Besides, science is not sensational, it's actually rather boring (in a good way), especially when considering single studies. It is the far-fetched interpretations of the results that are sensational, and therefor problematic. And these are usually done by attention-seeking media outlets.

It shouldn't be the scientist's responsibility to steer clear of research that might be interpreted sensationally, and the universities shouldn't discourage such research for fear of "bad press" but rather champion it in the name science-above-politics.

----------------------

[0] "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Related: there was a study mentioned in a pop science article recently showing that ketogenic diets were not effective in female mice compared to male, until the female mice had their ovaries removed. Unfortunately, I'm unable to find the study itself.

People are arguing about the use of mice etc..but it has been shown that medical care is male-oriented which negative affects female outcomes (heart disease and attacks for example.)

> but it has been shown that medical care is male-oriented which negative affects female outcomes

I'm new to this idea. Where has it been shown? What level or aspect is it male-oriented? What negative affects are there?

Symptoms of heart attacks in men and women are different. All the commonly known symptoms are male symptoms to the point that even medical professionals can not realize that a woman is having a heart attack.

Yep. There are plenty of anecdotes out there of women having life-threatening heart issues and being told by their doctor that they are overreacting or suffering from anxiety due to their symptoms differing from male symptoms.

NIH spends 700 million on breast cancer vs 250 million on prostate cancer. This shows a chauvinist and paternalistic attitude toward healthcare for women who are considered by the male dominated government to be children incapable of taking care of themselves and need the support of men.

There are legitimate ways in which medical care is male-oriented. As another commenter says, heart attack symptoms vary by gender but this is not always understood by healthcare practitioners [0].

[0]: https://www.allinahealth.org/healthysetgo/heal/heart-attack-...

Regarding cybersnowflake's comment, I think this is relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

> but it has been shown that medical care is male-oriented which negative affects female outcome

Which is also why men live much longer than women, I assume?

Medical errors are one of the leading causes of death in the US, so male-oriented care may indeed be why women live longer.

That's something else, but nice try.

I'm serious. Men tend not to see doctors, and when they do, it's usually taken seriously. That leads to interventions which can have significant risks. Medical errors are behind only heart disease and cancer and ahead of all respiratory disease, as a leading cause of death in the US, according to John Hopkins.

"10 percent of all U.S. deaths are now due to medical error."

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...

Indeed, the gap in life expectancy really makes you think.

The budget for medical care shows the opposite. Women receive a larger share of money for treatments (https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...) and a larger share of money goes into women research in Medical Research (https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/08/go...).

Women has a significantly higher mean number of visits to their primary care clinic and diagnostic services than men (https://www.mdedge.com/familymedicine/article/60747/womens-h...). The National Center for Health Statistics found that women made 30% more visits to physicians’ offices than men between 1995 and 20112.

If we then look at specific outcomes, lets compared cancer, stroke and hearth attacks. Cancer survival rate is higher for women then men when accounting for age. Men also has a higher risk for cancer, which remain when accounting for age group.

In regard to stroke the risk increases by age group as does mortality. Men are at higher risk of stroke for most age groups below age 85 years, and over 85 the incidence reverses dramatically. Outcomes is slightly worse for women but is mainly attributed to the higher age group, and there does not seem to be any difference in outcome when accounting for age.

Last hearth attack, where survival rate is higher for men then women when accounting for age. Men however is at higher risk for hearth attack and at younger age groups.

If anything, the majority of time medical care is female-oriented which negative affects male outcomes. The money, the research and the utilization of medical facilities goes more to women then men. Hearth attack outcomes is an exception and a lot of work is being done to address it, and hearth attack is go to argument when people want to argue that the health care system is discriminating against women.

Poor mice. The scientists should experiment on their body, not on some other body. This is cruel.

I agree, and have often had the feeling that a better scientific method would say: you can experiment however you want on another being, as long as you're willing to have it done to yourself as well. Do you want to look at something under a microscope? Very well, if you agree to also be looked at under a microscope. Do you want to cut something into pieces and examine it? Very well, if you agree to also be cut into pieces and examined.

You want to eat? Very well, if you agree to also be eaten.

It's sort of weird to see this article framed as a progressive move against male bias when it seems to buy wholesale into a gender essentialialist worldview. The piece even touches on it at the end, dropping a hand grenade in its last line:

"There’s nothing anti-feminist about saying the neurobiology in the female brain might be different."

- I'm not sure about this ^

That being said, I don't think the practice of using exclusively male mice in lab testing can be justified either. For the same reason: reject gender essentialism.

You can't very well have it both ways. Either you recognize that there are real physical differences or you don't.

If you don't recognize differences in the female, then what you are saying is that sex is a social construct and that sex reassignment surgery is a make believe product. In such a case, feminism is a fraud product for a fake difference that doesn't exist.

Even if you can have a man and female that look physically identical in every way, and that might be possible, you still have to deal with the average distance between physical traits, which is quite real and measurable. And also the hormonal differences, and the differences caused by internal structures based upon this signaling which is often different even from an early age.

Feminism, as I have seen it, has its basis in recognizing that differences in sex can sometimes lead to only small gaps in task performance, and thus the sexes in many ways are like for like. Generally true.

Good luck being saved by an all female group of firefighters, however. I wish you all the best in that. But maybe that is the cost of "equality". More people die, and quality sometimes diminishes.

I'll believe your rejection of gender essentialism when men are delivering babies. They can obviously produce milk, and that's already well documented.

Edit: To be fair, you can absolutely have firefighters that are female and even more prepared to save lives than males. The problem is that a quota system encourages physical features rather than merit to be key indicators in hiring, which is absolutely the wrong thing. A serious weightlifter that was female could easily be an amazing fire fighter.

You're making a basic mistake between gender and sex. Gender is a social category, and women as a social group are oppressed in various ways. A major task of feminism is to identify and end gender-based oppression. None of that depends on a biologically-determined notion of womanhood.

You're also making an extremely lazy mistake about "average distance between physical traits". I would absolutely trust the capabilities of an all-female fire dept. Not least because people who get into firefighting are not average physical specimens, they have to meet some standard of physical fitness. If a man, woman or gender nonbinary person meet the requirements (btw i think we're both buying into an exaggerated notion of the physical fitness of firefighters), then what reason would I have for doubting their capabilities? Would you want to be saved from a burning building by a team of men with the build of a computer programmer? Gender is not the important question here, and that should be obvious.

That's the thing though -- usually the physical requirements are drastically different. I'm not sure about fire departments, but in the US military the physical requirements for women are laughable compared to those for men.

Yes, compare the different pullup standard for men vs women in the Marine corps PFT: https://www.military.com/military-fitness/marine-corps-fitne...

"Pull-ups

This event is not timed, your score is determined by how many pull-ups you can complete before dropping off the bar. This event is male Marines only.

Flexed-Arm Hang

This event is timed, your score is based on how long you can hang maintaining elbow flexion. This event is for female Marines."

Without knowing more it's not obvious to me which is the higher standard. I can do a few pullups but probably couldn't hang for more than a minute.

Max score for hanging is 70 seconds.

Cant remove the chains in your head, if the chains in your head prohibit you from removing those chains.

While a full complement of professional female firefighters are likely just fine as fire fighters, good luck finding enough women with needed build and desire to woman half of the fire stations.

> If you don't recognize differences in the female, then what you are saying is that sex is a social construct and that sex reassignment surgery is a make believe product. In such a case, feminism is a fraud product for a fake difference that doesn't exist

Things that are social constructs still exist. Prison is a social construct, but it still sucks to be in one. Gender is a social context, for which in our actual society there are penalties and privileges.

You're confusing the concept of a social construct with "things invented by humans".

Additionally, simply because there may be social pressure towards some trait or value does not mean this value is completely arbitrary. (ie, "another, better society could do away with trait X, if only they were better educated!") For an easy example, think of traits such as bravery, love, trust, or honesty. There's much social pressure towards these traits (at least within some small groups) but that's not to say that these traits are totally arbitrary, just that social pressure is one of the primary mechanisms by which these innate traits are enforced.

> "There’s nothing anti-feminist about saying the neurobiology in the female brain might be different."

> I'm not sure about this ^

Are you saying that it's feminist belief that there are no differences between male and female brains? It seems a lifetime of exposure to different hormones would make it obvious that there most likely are differences and as the article points out, denying that is doing women harm.

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