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A review by alexisrt
Doing Harm: The Truth about How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
4.0
This is an important book on the gender gap in medicine. Maya Dusenbery identifies two main gaps: the knowledge gap and the trust gap. Medicine still lags in including women in clinical trials and in researching conditions that occur only in, more frequently in, or differently in women. Secondly, doctors distrust women, discount their reporting of their symptoms, and ascribe women's pain as psychological--despite data showing that women are not more emotional, are not drug seekers, and do not seek medical care more readily than men. This bias is compounded for women of color and women who are overweight, and it's not just in the US (the book is US centric, but there are multiple examples of the same behavior from other countries.
Most of this book is great, if enraging, but it's not perfect. In order to keep the book manageable, it's selective. Routine gynecological and maternity care is excluded, as is anything psychiatric. Dusenbery is aggressive on the history of hysteria and its transformation into somatoform disorder--the latter is largely dismissed as a new way to disbelieve women. Her interest is solely in the physical--her focuses are on heart disease, autoimmune disease, and pain disorders. She's so intent to believe that bias is the root of all evil that she sometimes gets into dicey territory on science. I have thyroid disease and I've seen the downside of aggressive patient advocacy for treatment--I wouldn't rely on Mary Shomon. Similarly, she treats the chronic Lyme controversy as solely a question of doctors refusing to believe women, and as someone who's followed that debate for years I'm less convinced. She doesn't criticize "Lyme literate" doctors who charge $12,000 for months of antibiotics that aren't proven to work and who prey on women in their own way. The problem with medicine being lousy is that the alternatives are worse.
Overall, though, a great read.
Most of this book is great, if enraging, but it's not perfect. In order to keep the book manageable, it's selective. Routine gynecological and maternity care is excluded, as is anything psychiatric. Dusenbery is aggressive on the history of hysteria and its transformation into somatoform disorder--the latter is largely dismissed as a new way to disbelieve women. Her interest is solely in the physical--her focuses are on heart disease, autoimmune disease, and pain disorders. She's so intent to believe that bias is the root of all evil that she sometimes gets into dicey territory on science. I have thyroid disease and I've seen the downside of aggressive patient advocacy for treatment--I wouldn't rely on Mary Shomon. Similarly, she treats the chronic Lyme controversy as solely a question of doctors refusing to believe women, and as someone who's followed that debate for years I'm less convinced. She doesn't criticize "Lyme literate" doctors who charge $12,000 for months of antibiotics that aren't proven to work and who prey on women in their own way. The problem with medicine being lousy is that the alternatives are worse.
Overall, though, a great read.