Kelly AlhooiePelviBiz, Pelvibiz · Healthcare Business Strategy Assistant

The real issue isn’t just that women were excluded from research for decades.

30 Nov 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:56

Excerpt from a YouTube video by Kelly Alhooie (uploaded 2025-11-30) discussing the historical exclusion of women from clinical research following the thalidomide crisis and an NIH policy change in 1993. The speaker explains practical reasons researchers often cite for studying men preferentially (menstrual cycles, peri/post-menopause, perceived predictability), and highlights consequences of applying male-based findings to women — using statins and menopause-related cholesterol increases as an illustrative example. The speaker claims statins have never been shown in women to decrease heart attack risk.

Chapters

Women were not even required legally to be in studies until 1993 from the NIH. Now, that happened because thalidomide was being used in pregnant women for nausea, and it ended up causing birth defects. And that freaked everyone out, understandably. But they removed all women from studies after that just in case they might get pregnant. Then when you talk to researchers, it's much more expensive and harder to study women because of their cycles or because of peri or post menopause. And men are just predictable. So they just study mostly men and just take those things and infer them to women when we don't really understand the gender differences and the sex differences and how cardiovascular medications affect. So greatest example statins, right? We use statins left and right to treat high cholesterol. Most women will have significant elevations of cholesterol through menopause. So here she goes through the change, boom, her cholesterol goes up, goes to her pcp. You need a statin. Statins have never been shown in women to decrease the risk of a heart attack.