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Congress is sending a message to American men: men's health
doesn't count.
The disturbing health and mortality disparities between American
whites and blacks are well known, but most people do not realize
that the health and mortality disparities between women and men
are just as great. For example, the gap in life expectancy
between whites and blacks is six years, while the gender gap is
5.7 years. Adjusted for age, men are 1.6 times as likely as
women to die from one of the top 10 causes of death, and blacks
are 1.5 times as likely to die from them as whites.
Despite this, it is women's health, not men's, which continues
to receive government attention and funding. For example, the
National Institutes of Health--the federal focal point for
medical research in the U.S.--spends nearly four times as much
on female-specific health research as on male-specific research.
And though the average man is as likely to die from prostate
cancer as the average woman is from breast cancer, the
Department of Health and Human Services' National Cancer
Institute spends three and a half times as much money on breast
cancer research as on prostate cancer research.
In fact, prostate cancer makes up 37% of all cancer cases but
receives only 5% of federal research funding. In addition, the
breast cancer postage stamp has raised over $25 million for
breast cancer research since it began in 1998, while a 1999 bill
proposing a similar stamp for prostate cancer research was
unsuccessful.
When Congress formed the Office on Women's Health in 1991, its
goal was to improve women's health by directing and coordinating
women's health research, health care services, and health
education. Since then men's health advocates have been trying to
create an Office of Men's Health, with the goal of duplicating
the OWH's success. Yet while a new bill which will help to make
the OWH's funding permanent was just passed by the House, the
Men's Health Act of 2001 (H.R. 632) remains trapped in the House
Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on health. If not
rescued soon, the bill will die when the 107th Congress adjourns
this fall.
According to Tracie Snitker, director of public affairs for the
Men's Health Network, "the number and quality of federally
funded women's health education projects is outstanding. But
while outreach programs teach women about breast cancer and
cervical cancer, there are few if any programs which educate men
about their own gender-specific health needs.
"We want to do for men what the OWH has done for women," she
adds. "Men need education about the cancers which
disproportionately affect them, such as prostate cancer, skin
cancer and colorectal cancer. Young men need education on
testicular cancer. Most importantly, we need to teach men to
seek preventative health care."
Part of the reason an Office of Men's Health has been so long in
coming is the common but nonetheless false perception that the
government and the scientific community have paid more attention
to men's health than to women's. In 1990 Senator Barbara
Mikulski (D-MD) made national headlines by citing the fact that
women-specific health research comprised only 14% of the budget
of the National Institute of Health (NIH). She called it
"blatant discrimination" and led the successful campaign for the
creation of the OWH. What Mikulski and many in the media who
publicized Mikulski's claims did not understand was that only
6.5% of the NIH's budget went to male-specific research--the
vast majority of the NIH's research was gender neutral.
Today the disparity in favor of women in NIH research has grown,
as has the gender disparity in enrollments in
non-gender-specific studies. According to the Government
Accounting Office, one of the few areas where men comprise the
majority of research subjects is in initial trials of
experimental drugs. These are the trials undertaken to ensure
that the drugs are not lethal or seriously harmful.
First, drugs are usually tested on rats and monkeys. If there
are no adverse effects, they are then tested on people--usually
men. If the men also show no adverse effects, the drugs advance
to larger trials, where women comprise the majority.
Considering Congress' repeated refusal to act to help men's
health, one can't help but wonder--is men's health as important
as women's, or is it merely more important than monkeys'?
This column first appeared in the
Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (10/9/02).
Dianna
Thompson is a founder
and executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers and
Children (www.acfc.org). She can be contacted by e-mail at DThompson2232@aol.com.
Glenn Sacks writes about gender issues from the male
perspective. He can be reached at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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