Haseltine, who has devoted much of her career to pursuing such questions, was heartened last April when the Institute of Medicine validated this budding area of investigation by issuing its report, "Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?"1 The IOM's overwhelming conclusion: it most certainly does.
But to what extent, and how? The most often studied differences are in the reproductive system. However, over the past 20 years, and most rapidly in the last 10, scientists have accumulated data on differences between the sexes at many levels, from the cellular to the behavioral, from the clinical to the pharmaceutical. For example, health educators have been trying for years to tell the public about sex differences in heart disease using the general media: on average, men experience heart attacks 10 years earlier than women, and have a better rate of survival after one year. Symptoms also vary by ...
