The Sexist Thalidomide Tragedy | Sci Guys Podcast #65
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- čas přidán 11. 07. 2020
- Sexism in STEM is certainly a problem, this week we talk about a disastrous outcome of this bias. The Thalidomide scandal is an example of the dangers of poor testing and sheer recklessness.
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REFERENCES
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/obje...
www.thalidomidetrust.org/abou...
www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-c...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/jour...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-1...
chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelv...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journ...
www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
academic.oup.com/toxsci/artic...
www.acs.org/content/acs/en/mo...
Should we test medicine on animals?
The exclusion of women in studies is called androcentrism
Until we build better bioreactors and alternative testing methods, absolutely yes
Yes, the covid deniers... the lesser of all animals :)
I think we would be more responsible & ethical if we did NOT test/experiment(abuse) animals.
It honestly depends the medicine. It’s going to react differently in humans and animals, and to get the most accuracy on the effects of medications, people are the best option. Humans can atleast consent to the testing, animals cannot.
Cory’s description of unconscious bias, sexism, racism and why we need to actively be anti-sexist/racist is *chefs kiss*
oh dear, I accidentally read the title as 'the sexIEST thalidomide experiment' oops haha
Same 💀
lol, same
Yeah, same. I got very confused.
Honestly why clicked in the first place hahah
Me too
Can we have an episode on testing biases? During college, a lot of my friends talked to me about this and just how behind health is if the user is not a cis-male.
Yess medical bigotry is so prevalent and needs to be talk about
I've seen many doctors on yt defend it too and claim that the bias is a lot smaller than it is (doctor Mike is one of them) and it would be cool to see some people talk about bias in a real way where it is actually recognised.
Nooo I love Dr. Mike that's sad. Who is he to talk about it anyway as a man who doesn't have firsthand experience with it.
It's horribly fascinating because:
1] Groups that are excluded from testing end up hurt ( putting it lightly )
2] Often the groups that are excluded may not get proper medical help ( ex: women being seen "over exaggerating" their pain or condition )
3] Bias in how tests may be reported ( see the example in number 2 )
There's so much to talk about and learn
Biomedical engineer here! This is definitely a significant issue and has been a major focus of the biomedical research community in recent years,. This includes new regulations by the FDA requiring representation of different groups (including women) in clinical trials for new drugs.
There are a number of reasons we have gotten here, but one of the largest reasons is where/when/how requirement for studies had historically occurred - mainly on university campuses amount the students in STEM departments (a population which has historically been skewed young, healthy, white and male)
Do an episode on periods. Even though I've been having them for 5 years I know nothing about them other than: egg is not fertilised - there is blood and pain. Like why do I have cramps in my legs, legs have nothing to do with my womb, right?
Also you could expand to general sexism because lots of people try to claim that women behave and think in a different way to men or are "designed" for certain tasks like child care and that their biology should restrict them from doing certain things when that's not the case and I was wondering if you could find any scientific evidence to prove it?
Re: sexism in science/medicine...men are seen as the "default" human. Those models of human muscles? Male bodies. Women's muscle structure is a bit different. Early signs of heart attacks? Male bodies. Women have different warning signs.
I love that this podcast is so frank about sexism. It's refreshing and so important 🔥
Yeah and none of the CPR dummies have breasts, they all have male torsos.
Appreciate Corry doing his very best to explain stereoisomerism as a preface to the actual episode content despite it being something that takes like two weeks of explaining to second year chem majors
In university? We learn about stereoisomerism in high school here!
This was an ongoing storyline (thalidomide) in "Call the Midwife" in past series. Without the scientific background, though.
It was a horrific few years in the medical community. Not only did the medical staff not know what caused it, they seldom had any training to help the new mother with the situation. (Lots of unhelpful hushed voices.)
I saw that as well, thought it was a good storyline about such a tragic circumstance.
call the midwife is so good i remember that storyline
Here's a nice wee comment
As a German it was really funny listening to u guys trying to pronounce GmbH right 😂 and glad that u looked it up
I wonder if cis women are partially disregarded from medical research as we seem to be considered as ‘potentially pregnant’ at any time (i.e you could be in the early stages of pregnancy and it is now considered unethical to test on pregnant women).
But there are ways by now to see, if you are in early stages of a pregnancy, so they could just test that right before the study
Testing on animals also has a strong male bias as well, a specific example I remember was rats, and if I recall correctly a lot of the time the excuse for only studying bio-males is that they don't menstruate and don't have a hormone cycle so the results will not depend on when you study them, but it's like you guys said, the study isn't necessarily applicable to bio-females and can have much worse effects, diversity in race is also a big issue in studies because not all races react similarly to the same drug, but it seems that your bio-sex effects how drugs react more than race
abt the right-shelled snail: a recessive mutation in any of a number of genes could cause the left-shelled phenotype, so i.e. Jeremy was rr recessive (>>right-shelled) and HH dominant and his mate was hh (right-shelled) and RR, so when they combine the dominant gene in both combinations (hH and Rr) result in right-shelled phenotype.hope this helps!😅
Love the explanation! I rmb this from bio forever ago.
saved this bad boy for monday so i could watch it on my birthday day. 10/10
Reminds me of the artificial heart issue. The only one approved for use in the US is designed to fit 80% of all males. Unfortunately it only fits about 20% of females.
I think like 50% of the episodes I've watched have included a Professor Trelawney impression 😂
Thalidomide is still used today in cancer treatment and against leprosy and its also a medical treatment for ulcers in the mouth and stomach but you are not advised to take the treatment under pregnancy anymore.
Explains chirality using *hands*, (like we all do)... in an episode about *Thalidomide* ? #readTheRoom
I'm pleased that you lads didn't know about thalidomide, (because that suggest that you didn't grow up with the horrible insult that used to be thrown around my school yard that implied that someone suffered from thalidomide invitro.)
I had no idea that would be used as an insult! What a horrible thing to say
This was such a rollercoaster ride of an episode
29:12 Another way of thinking about bias in medical research & treatment is to think of men as the default or baseline. In other words, because of systemic misogyny, men have occupied most of the professions for many generations and society, in turn, tends to regard males as being the standard against which we measure. Scientists, doctors & medical researchers weren't exempt from these tendencies, so when the scientific method was/is applied to medical research, male test subjects are the norm.
This, ofc, holds true across subject areas, such as psychological research & testing, workplace safety standards, automobile design, etc.
Imagine being a trans guy or a nb person carrying baby abd being referred to as a pregnant woman.
That's scientific bias against women right there.
OMG, that would suck, and then having to explain that your not a woman👌🤔😣
@@sugarhigh9853 or being dead and not be able to explain.
But in the previous episode Corry referred to pregnant people as pregnant women. I thought it's not that big of a deal, but it's starting to bugging me. I wish people would be more careful and actively more inclusive with their language.
I don't have the best attention span but I actually find myself watching all/most of these Sci Guys episodes all the way through 💖
I read that they did notice some birth defects in the rodents they tested it on and just ignored them. And honestly, I find it kind of hard to believe that none of them were pregnant during the experiments, as rodents get pregnant _very_ easily.
Would be good to see an episode about GMOs or genetic engineering applications in medicine
35:53 You're saying that after the first couple months of pregnancy it's just... fine? Why don't we use it anymore then? Plenty of people still have morning sickness after the first two months.
women are regarded as too irregular hormonally. to complicated.
it messes up simple test design. maybe also because damage to egg cells is a concern
@@catwalking4959 Also millions of male gametes are disposed of daily, (so there is a surplus) while female gametes are limited to fewer than 456 per lifetime of each person that menstruates.
Would you guys do an episode on ambidextrous people? I was confused about why I can do things with both hands, I looked up more about it and it actually seems to be a really interesting topic.
I like this topic! The science of being ambidextrous... I can see it now. And if you can train yourself to become ambidextrous!
Trinity yeah mine is instinctive, but I have had to consciously continue writing with my left, because my school only taught us to write with our right hand unless we were literally left handed, so if I hadn’t it wouldn’t look even to my right anymore. I don’t know whether you can train yourself to be ambidextrous, as I think it is more than just writing, for instance I can play sports with both my left and right hands/feet, play my musical instruments in both left and right dominance, but I think you can train yourself at least to write to the point it looks kind of even!
Please tell me I'm not the only one to dance to the opening theme!
We do it every week!
Fun fact in Brazil women in the 1990 where prescribed thalidomide under pregnancy
Who else knows the thalidomide crisis from call the midwife??
I really wish this podcast existed when I took organic chemistry
I am currently pregnant and yeah we cant take basically anything now 😂😂😂
🎶 we didn't start the fire 🎵
They test on men rather than women because of our hormone cycles interfering with the test results. (which is accurate to be fair but we also need to know what effects it will have on us with all our hormones xD )
I have a condition like the subject of the video and people get mixed up with my condition with the subject of the video
Cant wait for Luke to find the downside in next weeks episode ha ha
I forgot I knew the word chiral
oh
oh?
oh!
oooh
Thomas Quasthoff
Those pesky hormones are so confusing. Let's pretend there's this enormous difference between the sexes; it's not like we start as undifferentiated fetuses.
Women aren’t disregarded in clinical testing, men are more generally tested because women have all their eggs throughout their life and the things they test may effect them whereas men are making sperm constantly, so if the sperm are effected it wouldn’t cause infertility in the same way as the sperm would be replaced. Not saying this is complete right obviously, as they said things affect men and women differently, but there are reason behind it x amazing episode tho❤️
men are viewed as the normal and women the exception
Jamenchips
omg the way you pronounce "Isomer" is driving me crazy I'm sorry 😂 It's not "eyez-omers", it's "Iso-mer" like in the word "iso-lation" or if you know the chem word, "isotope" same deal.
That’s how I was taught to say it in school - I think it’s fine…
@@SciGuys Ya I mean it is "fine" just doesn't hit MY ear correctly. Didn't mean to come off as "you are a bad person for saying this differently" haha. I've just never heard it pronounced that way in any context. Google says it my way, maybe it's a "where you grew up" thing, like dialect. I dunno
It was used in the US but not widely distributed. There were thalidomide babies here as well.
Can you get to the point.