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Katie Couric: Sexism, Storytelling & Standing Up to Cancer

Explore episode Jun 24, 2026
Health & Fitness
Women Treated as Small Men with Boobs: The Research Scandal

Katie Couric: Sexism, Storytelling & Standing Up to Cancer · Jun 24, 2026 Health & Fitness

For decades, medical research excluded women because scientists thought hormonal fluctuations would 'screw up the data.' Women weren't required in US clinical trials until 1993, scientists didn't distinguish between sexes until roughly 10 years ago, and today women still take 4 extra years longer than men to be diagnosed with a condition.

Where this was said

Hormonal: Exposing Decades of Gender Inequity in Medical Research

At 1:09:50 · chapter starts 1:09:20

The episode's most data-dense and incendiary chapter opens with Katie explaining how her spidey sense picked up on a wave of emerging reporting about women's health inequity about 5 or 6 years ago. She began connecting dots that no one had fully assembled: from puberty to old age, women have been dismissed, marginalised, and underfunded. The core historical fact: women were not required to be included in US clinical trials until 1993, and scientists didn't routinely differentiate between male and female subjects until roughly 2015. The practical result: women take 4 extra years longer to be diagnosed, endometriosis takes 10 years on average to diagnose (50% still undiagnosed), and 80% of autoimmune disease patients are women. The most arresting single statistic: erectile dysfunction, affecting 19% of men, has received 5 times more research funding than PMS, which affects 90% of women. Only 1% of global health research investment goes to women's health outside of cancer. Only half of medical schools teach women's health courses. Crash test dummies were male until recently and female dummies aren't required in safety testing until 2028. The documentary, Hormonal, is being made with Emmy-winning director Esther Deer and filmmaker Dawn Porter, and is designed to be both enraging and entertaining — connecting the dots from the past to the present to a hopeful future if the aperture on women's health changes.

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