It’s still money. But with the moral superiority too. “I’m a doctor”
But also, they’re saying that people don’t care about women. There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence for that. Have you SEEN the tool that’s used on the cervix for this procedure? It’s actually insane.
Upwards of 80% of OBGYNs are women. Saying that none of these women care about other women, that they went into a field that specializes in caring for women’s health without caring about women, is an extraordinary claim.
I think what we’re seeing here is not at all a lack of caring but a mismatch in expectations vs reality. Many women who receive an IUD report some of the worst pain they’ve felt in their entire life. At the same time, it is a routine outpatient procedure and a specialist doctor can perform thousands of IUD insertions over the course of her career. Do we expect this doctor to react with the same intensity and outpouring of empathy every single time? Or would it be more reasonable to expect that she’d get used to seeing her patients in pain and be numbed by the experience? Compassion fatigue is a real and extremely common phenomenon. Furthermore, I would expect that a doctor who is unduly influenced by the pain of their patients may be compromised in their ability to perform under pressure.
As for the procedure itself, my understanding is that the majority of the pain is not caused by the tools but by the cervix reflexively producing intense cramps in an effort to expel a foreign object: the IUD. There’s not a whole lot that can be done about that besides giving the patient some Midol and a day off work to rest.
Many women who receive an IUD report some of the worst pain they’ve felt in their entire life.
…
There’s not a whole lot that can be done about that besides giving the patient some Midol and a day off work to rest.
Erm…“oh you’re having the worst pain of your life, here have a combination muscle relaxant and acetaminophen mix that’s available over the counter. And also loose a days income”
I’m curious what a doctor taking the pain seriously would look like to you. Are you expecting something like a locally injected anesthetic or full in-patient sedation?
I talked to a woman right after she had one inserted and that’s what she told me: intense cramps. I believe her. I’m not just spouting my opinion based on nothing.
If only science would study women as much as men, this procedure from the 1800s could be understood. It’s getting better for sure, at least you believed the one person who you talked to about it. You ever see the device they use to “pinch” and open the cervix? I could never. It’s called a tenaculum and looks like a torture device from the 1800s.
It’s well discussed and documented that medical science regularly ignores and brushes aside women, and is constantly several decades behind men’s science. So regardless of male or female obgyns or doctors, the scientific understanding SYSTEMICALLY of women’s issues AND women in general are more often brushed aside than not, so this push for actually doing something about the pain is a step in the right direction.
We already have rampant sexism, patriarchy, and male chauvinism in society as a whole - why would you believe academia and medical and scientific communities would be immune to those problems?
Science does ignore women a lot of the time but it’s not because they hate women. It’s because of medical ethics rules which make it a lot more expensive to include women in studies. You have to pay for pregnancy tests for women in the study and you have to do all kinds of corrections and extra analyses to make sure women’s menstrual cycles are not interfering with the data. Women who do get pregnant during the study need to be detected and removed from the study because any effects from the study that harm their baby can expose the researchers to enormous lawsuits.
So many studies, which don’t have a lot of money to begin with (we’re talking university studies run by grad students, not massive clinical trials run by big pharma) exclude women because it’s cheaper and easier and they get to run more studies as a result. The major exception to this are psychological studies that don’t carry the same risks, but these are usually run on the psychology students themselves (many of which are required to participate in them in order to receive course credits).
Considering men default humans and women an “other,” is the exact bias that has held back medical care for half the fucking population.
Everyone’s hormones are always in flux, every day. Eating food can drastically affect your hormones. Aerobic excercise can affect your hormones. Men have hormonal cycles as well.
What you wrote here about costs associated with medical research on women seems paraphrased from some out-of-date medical journal. Unless menstrual cycles are being studied, you do not “have to do all kinds of correction and analyses” to make sure they’re not affecting that study. I have no idea where you heard that, and would go as far as to say you just made it up. I don’t even know where to begin with the pregnancy test thing, unless you’re thinking of only medical trials, specifically.
It’s not only clinical trials where you test on people, chemically. There are a ton of tests for skin care products to compare their effectiveness. These have already gone through trials for safety but long-term research on their effects is important.
One example is the anti-acne medication Accutane which is known to cause birth defects. This drug cannot be given to women who may be pregnant under any circumstances. I believe doctors even require proof that the patient is on birth control before prescribing it.
As for menstrual cycles: they are known to affect skin, hair, joint mobility, pain sensitivity, mood, food preferences, weight, and more. Tons and tons of studies are affected by this. Everything from dieting to mental health care, skin care, hair care, and even sports medicine, exercise, and recovery from injury.
I’ve read plenty of specific papers on the subject of menstrual cycles and effects of hormones and, in short, well, you’re kinda full of shit. I don’t think you know what a menstrual cycle or hormones actually are, and I don’t think you’ve read tons and tons of studies on how hormones affect our bodies. Because you’re just kind of explaining being a person. Those are the things that hormones affect for everyone, every day. And women do not have more of them than men.
Pragmatism and idealism are almost always opposites, morality often lies on the side of idealism, and pragmatism is often used to sidestep morality.
We need to do better; it’s far better and efficient for society to do so.
I understand that explanation is not justification, but even if you assume this is a complete and wholly true explanation, do you really not see the problems with potentially justifying these things? Imagine like never feeding a few of your kids “because it’s too expensive”. That’s completely unacceptable, incomplete, and deeply flawed, scientifically, and leads to MASSIVE problems in society.
These are systemic oversights that needn’t happen in almost all cases. It’s the exact same bullshit as promoting the men’s sports teams, budgeting, and prioritizing them more for resources and time. It’s literally systemic oppression.
Oh I can’t justify it at all. These things come about because of complex interactions throughout society. Scientists didn’t decide for themselves to have these strict rules on experiments involving women who might become pregnant. Those rules were imposed on them by politicians and regulators whose goals were not to promote the best possible research.
The same goes for the situation in the US with employers providing health insurance through group policies. That situation came about during a war-time cap on employee compensation. Employers used the insurance benefit as a way to circumvent the cap. Now Americans seem to be stuck with a system they increasingly do not want.
One of the worst heartbreaks I experienced growing up was when I realized that no one is really in charge of anything and that we’re all trapped in a system we can’t escape. 1984 was a big influence for me on this one.
I hear what you’re saying about budget, but this just goes to show how women are considered like some special kind of human. As if men, with all their hormonal and biological peculiarities, were the default.
Women are kind of a large part of the human population – over half of it. It’s not like some nice demographic.
It’s still money. But with the moral superiority too. “I’m a doctor”
But also, they’re saying that people don’t care about women. There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence for that. Have you SEEN the tool that’s used on the cervix for this procedure? It’s actually insane.
Upwards of 80% of OBGYNs are women. Saying that none of these women care about other women, that they went into a field that specializes in caring for women’s health without caring about women, is an extraordinary claim.
I think what we’re seeing here is not at all a lack of caring but a mismatch in expectations vs reality. Many women who receive an IUD report some of the worst pain they’ve felt in their entire life. At the same time, it is a routine outpatient procedure and a specialist doctor can perform thousands of IUD insertions over the course of her career. Do we expect this doctor to react with the same intensity and outpouring of empathy every single time? Or would it be more reasonable to expect that she’d get used to seeing her patients in pain and be numbed by the experience? Compassion fatigue is a real and extremely common phenomenon. Furthermore, I would expect that a doctor who is unduly influenced by the pain of their patients may be compromised in their ability to perform under pressure.
As for the procedure itself, my understanding is that the majority of the pain is not caused by the tools but by the cervix reflexively producing intense cramps in an effort to expel a foreign object: the IUD. There’s not a whole lot that can be done about that besides giving the patient some Midol and a day off work to rest.
…
Erm…“oh you’re having the worst pain of your life, here have a combination muscle relaxant and acetaminophen mix that’s available over the counter. And also loose a days income”
I’m curious what a doctor taking the pain seriously would look like to you. Are you expecting something like a locally injected anesthetic or full in-patient sedation?
Either! Both would be better than throwing up from the pain, passing out, and then being sneered at for both.
Perhaps at least a prescription pain killer taken orally?
I would certainly support some sort of local, along the lines of what dentists use.
Do you know what actually causes the pain or is your understanding just an assumption?
I like how even in the article it calls out medical gaslighting.
I talked to a woman right after she had one inserted and that’s what she told me: intense cramps. I believe her. I’m not just spouting my opinion based on nothing.
If only science would study women as much as men, this procedure from the 1800s could be understood. It’s getting better for sure, at least you believed the one person who you talked to about it. You ever see the device they use to “pinch” and open the cervix? I could never. It’s called a tenaculum and looks like a torture device from the 1800s.
It’s well discussed and documented that medical science regularly ignores and brushes aside women, and is constantly several decades behind men’s science. So regardless of male or female obgyns or doctors, the scientific understanding SYSTEMICALLY of women’s issues AND women in general are more often brushed aside than not, so this push for actually doing something about the pain is a step in the right direction.
We already have rampant sexism, patriarchy, and male chauvinism in society as a whole - why would you believe academia and medical and scientific communities would be immune to those problems?
Science does ignore women a lot of the time but it’s not because they hate women. It’s because of medical ethics rules which make it a lot more expensive to include women in studies. You have to pay for pregnancy tests for women in the study and you have to do all kinds of corrections and extra analyses to make sure women’s menstrual cycles are not interfering with the data. Women who do get pregnant during the study need to be detected and removed from the study because any effects from the study that harm their baby can expose the researchers to enormous lawsuits.
So many studies, which don’t have a lot of money to begin with (we’re talking university studies run by grad students, not massive clinical trials run by big pharma) exclude women because it’s cheaper and easier and they get to run more studies as a result. The major exception to this are psychological studies that don’t carry the same risks, but these are usually run on the psychology students themselves (many of which are required to participate in them in order to receive course credits).
Considering men default humans and women an “other,” is the exact bias that has held back medical care for half the fucking population.
Everyone’s hormones are always in flux, every day. Eating food can drastically affect your hormones. Aerobic excercise can affect your hormones. Men have hormonal cycles as well.
What you wrote here about costs associated with medical research on women seems paraphrased from some out-of-date medical journal. Unless menstrual cycles are being studied, you do not “have to do all kinds of correction and analyses” to make sure they’re not affecting that study. I have no idea where you heard that, and would go as far as to say you just made it up. I don’t even know where to begin with the pregnancy test thing, unless you’re thinking of only medical trials, specifically.
It’s not only clinical trials where you test on people, chemically. There are a ton of tests for skin care products to compare their effectiveness. These have already gone through trials for safety but long-term research on their effects is important.
One example is the anti-acne medication Accutane which is known to cause birth defects. This drug cannot be given to women who may be pregnant under any circumstances. I believe doctors even require proof that the patient is on birth control before prescribing it.
As for menstrual cycles: they are known to affect skin, hair, joint mobility, pain sensitivity, mood, food preferences, weight, and more. Tons and tons of studies are affected by this. Everything from dieting to mental health care, skin care, hair care, and even sports medicine, exercise, and recovery from injury.
I’ve read plenty of specific papers on the subject of menstrual cycles and effects of hormones and, in short, well, you’re kinda full of shit. I don’t think you know what a menstrual cycle or hormones actually are, and I don’t think you’ve read tons and tons of studies on how hormones affect our bodies. Because you’re just kind of explaining being a person. Those are the things that hormones affect for everyone, every day. And women do not have more of them than men.
Pragmatism and idealism are almost always opposites, morality often lies on the side of idealism, and pragmatism is often used to sidestep morality.
We need to do better; it’s far better and efficient for society to do so.
I understand that explanation is not justification, but even if you assume this is a complete and wholly true explanation, do you really not see the problems with potentially justifying these things? Imagine like never feeding a few of your kids “because it’s too expensive”. That’s completely unacceptable, incomplete, and deeply flawed, scientifically, and leads to MASSIVE problems in society.
These are systemic oversights that needn’t happen in almost all cases. It’s the exact same bullshit as promoting the men’s sports teams, budgeting, and prioritizing them more for resources and time. It’s literally systemic oppression.
Oh I can’t justify it at all. These things come about because of complex interactions throughout society. Scientists didn’t decide for themselves to have these strict rules on experiments involving women who might become pregnant. Those rules were imposed on them by politicians and regulators whose goals were not to promote the best possible research.
The same goes for the situation in the US with employers providing health insurance through group policies. That situation came about during a war-time cap on employee compensation. Employers used the insurance benefit as a way to circumvent the cap. Now Americans seem to be stuck with a system they increasingly do not want.
One of the worst heartbreaks I experienced growing up was when I realized that no one is really in charge of anything and that we’re all trapped in a system we can’t escape. 1984 was a big influence for me on this one.
I hear what you’re saying about budget, but this just goes to show how women are considered like some special kind of human. As if men, with all their hormonal and biological peculiarities, were the default.
Women are kind of a large part of the human population – over half of it. It’s not like some nice demographic.