ABSTRACT
Probably no one medical issue has captured the attention of the American public more in the last five years than the apparent inequities between attention paid to women’s health issues com pared to those of men. First and foremost is the concern with breast cancer. Statistics indicate that anywhere from 1 in 8 to 1 in 20 women will contract breast cancer during their lifetime; that “cure” rates have not dramatically improved in the last decade; and that even measures to reconstruct breast tissue (i.e., silicone implants) can be dangerous. Women ask, and rightly so, if the medical “ establishment” would be as blase if a similar problem of this magnitude affected a specifically male organ, like the testicles. While we in no way wish to minimize the problem of breast cancer, we feel that it is unfortunate that lost in the anger over the breast cancer problem-at least until the last several years-has been another problem: that of women’s un equal treatment with regard to heart disease. Often, when women presented in a doctor’s office with chest pain, their
physicians would attribute their discomfort to hysteria or anxi ety. Based on the fact that women who are premenopausal don’t usually have heart disease, they would prescribe psychotropic medication and send them on their way. This action would make the women feel as if the doctor thought they were making up their illness and complaining. There is now ample evidence that women 1. undergo fewer diagnostic tests than men when they have chest pain complaints, and 2. even when heart disease is present, women are not treated as aggressively as men. What makes this latter controversy even more upsetting is that in terms of sheer numbers, many, many more women will die of heart disease than of breast cancer.
