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I think that Biden may have been imprecisely referencing the idea that many 'gender neutral' medical studies are done only on men (classically because you get less variance if the subjects are more similar to each other so picking one gender for subjects is good, and it should be men because women might be pregnant or their cycle might introduce variance).
The classic example, which for all I know may be apocryphal, is that women having heart attacks present with slightly different symptoms than men having heart attacks. But most studies done on heart attack symptoms used men as subjects, leading doctors to not recognize women having heart attacks when reporting their symptoms some larger percent of the time.
Autism is another example, women with autism/aspergers didn't match the DSM criteria which were designed around mostly male subjects, and took a while to be recognized and receive treatment at the same rates.
And I stress, all of that is basically folk wisdom I've received from mostly cultural sources, it might be an old wive's tale for all I know. But it's a commonly-cited concept on the left, and makes sense as something he could be referencing.
Also, I don't think it follows that men having higher disease burden means men's health should receive more of the gendered medical research funding. It may mean that men should get more healtchare funding.
But it's quite possible that
In fact, it's even possible that the 'gender neutral funding' covers gender neutral conditions that affect more men than women, in a way that makes the overall research funding more beneficial towards men overall (not saying we have evidence of that, just that the data you've presented doesn't rule it out)
This is not the case for a long time now. From 2010 to 2020 the ratio of women in clinical trials oscillated between 52% and 62%.
Source https://orwh.od.nih.gov/sites/orwh/files/docs/ORWH_BiennialReport2019_20_508.pdf, Apendix E, Table 1A.
I think this is a very good point.
This goes against the definition. See Note 2.3. If I am not mistaken, a condition is considered gendered as soon as it crosses the 45%-55% ration.
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Tangential, but I find this strange. It's a condition that we don't know the cause of, nor is there anything like a lab test or imaging to confirm it. It's all based on observed behavior.
For males there's one set of behaviors that are used to confirm diagnosis, and for females another.
How can you make the determination that this is actually the same condition?
Science has moved past your statements. We now know many genetic variations which lead to testably differing neurologies and predictable personality traits. The baseline differences between male and female result in different behaviors stemming from the shared differences from neurotypical neurology.
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You can look for correlated clusters of symptoms. It’s not that women and men with autism present with entirely qualitatively different features, it’s just that men and women present them to different degrees (men usually more so). If the scale is calibrated to men it will be relatively insensitive for women (though more specific).
Toy example: playing Warhammer and MtG is not especially diagnostic of autism in men. Lots of non-autistic men play Warhammer and MtG [citation needed]. I would expect a far higher proportion of cis women who play Warhammer/MtG to be autistic. So if our toy autism scale only puts a small amount of weight on this variable it will miss autism in women.
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