[UA] Re: [UA][OT] UA unintenionally sexist? (LONG!)

[Timothy Ferguson]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gregory Paul Stolze" <holycrow at mindspring.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 1:00 AM
Subject: Re: [UA] Re: [UA][OT] UA unintenionally sexist? (LONG!)


> At 08:53 PM 09/02/2000 +1000, you wrote:
> >Others, for example that men live only 90% as long as women in those
> >societies where lifespan is a function of technology, never get
attention,
> >because women never stand up for men in them.  The closest things we have
to
> >remedial projects on male death rates are prostate research and services
for
> >lonely elderly women.  8)
>
> Dude, estrogen cleans your arteries (IIRC).  It's not a matter of social
> bias.  Women live longer because they have fewer heart attacks because the
> primary female hormone has a very beneficent side effect.  (I think.  But
I
> could be wrong.)

No, this is correct, but the obvious counterpoint is this:

In societies where lifespan is little impacted upon by technology, women die
earlier than men.  How we apply our technologies determines how much each
sex rises above this basal rate.  Which medicines we chose to research is a
matter of social bias.

Female death in societies which use folk remedies tend to be because of
complications to do with pregnancy, but there are several other illnesses
which are now easily and readily treated which have male semi-equivalents
which have been researched less and are thus less readily treated.  Breast
and prostate cancer, for example, kill about the same number of people, but
a (flawed) blood test for PC only became available within the last decade,
and no conclusive research has been carried out to determine the potential
efficacy of screening programs.  One has high political capital, the other
does not.

A second incidental, in some generations of course, is that men die in war,
but this, as an unnatural cause, is factored out, along with road trauma and
suicide.

We have no actual proof, odd as it may seem, that arterial scale causes
heart disease (except for blockages).  On a common sense level, yes, it
almost certainly does, but there are still researchers trying to work out
how it is laid down.  New Scientist, for example, recently reported
preliminary research into the possibility arterial scale is caused by a
virus.  Given that it is the leading cause of death in men, it's astonishing
we simply don't know the mechanism for the laying down of arterial deposits.
That we do not know this, and yet know other things, is a sign of societal
bias.  Far more research has been done into the possibility that obesity has
a viral vector (for which there is a suprisingly strong correlation in one
preliminary study.)

(And before anyone points it out, yes I'm aware of the counter-thesis which
goes "Women have longer lifespans because they are the discriminated against
minority."  It goes something like this: Women experimented on for
reproductive drugs, because women are of low status.  Women discover
benefits of oestrogen.  Congrats women.)


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