“There’s a pretty vast landscape of unexamined assumptions about human uniqueness,” Natterson-Horowitz said. Solutions to some of medicine’s most vexing questions could be walking on four feet beside us.Ĭalifornia ‘Just living with pain’: Women’s healthcare waylaid by COVID-19 pandemicĪs cervical cancer screenings among Southern California women drop, experts sound the alarm about the ramifications of letting women’s wellness fall by the wayside. Some endure the same chronic diseases that humans do, while others appear to be naturally resistant. Many of the species that share our planet are exposed to similar stressors and environmental contaminants. But we can fill some of the gaps by looking to the animal world.

We can’t go back in time, Natterson-Horowitz says. (The reverse is true for diseases that primarily affect men.) In addition, women have historically been a minority of clinical trial participants, and for several years those of childbearing age were barred as research subjects in the U.S., a policy the National Institutes of Health reversed in 1986. Diseases that primarily affect women get a disproportionately small amount of research money relative to the years of healthy life they steal.

Her latest focus is on cross-species similarities in female health, a field that has long been underfunded, understudied and misunderstood.

Wildhood by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz