Are Women the Cats of the Medical World?

An article got me thinking

Photo by Amber Kipp on Unsplash

The other morning an article in the New York Times caught my eye—

Why Are Cats Such a Medical Black Box?

My first thought on seeing this was, They are? But then when I opened the article and began reading, it was not what I expected, because when I read “black box” in the title I was thinking of the black box on an airplane, the device that records the plane’s flight data and that investigators always seek in the event of misfortune in order to understand what happened.

In other words, I was thinking “black box” in the sense of the thing that has the answers. So that made me think that the article was about how cats contain the pieces to medical puzzles—how they are, in other words, data treasure troves.

The article was nothing of the sort. Instead, it was about how cats remain a medical mystery. My next thought was, How could the Times mess this up, using “black box” in the wrong way here? If cats are a medical “black box,” doesn’t that mean that they hold the secrets to how things go wrong?

My thought after that was, Well, let me look into this—what, exactly, is a “black box?” Maybe I don’t know what I am talking about—it’s happened. Anyway, from Merriam-Webster online, I found the definitions shown in the image below.

After reading these definitions and then the article, I came to understand how the article was framing cats as a medical “black box.” They are, it appears, complicated creatures whose internal goings-on remain hidden from or mysterious to the user or, in a cat’s case, its owner. In the article, the author describes how her cat’s health began to fail for reasons that her vet could neither explain nor remedy due to the dearth of research on the health of cats and what might help them when they ail.

So, when I finished the article, I understood how the Times was using the term “black box,” but I still thought that a more definite term would have been better—for example, mystery, mentioned above—because I bet that a lot of people had the same first impression as I. But the article got me thinking about things from another angle.

We have long known and heard how women have always played second fiddle to men in the medical world, not only in terms of profession—for example, male doctors outnumbering female doctors—but also in terms of medical research and knowledge.

In general, there is vastly more research done on and knowledge about men’s health than their is of women’s health. Things have changed, and continue to change, but the gap remains.

This disparity came right to mind when the article mentioned that very little research has been done on cats’ health as compared to that of dogs. Oh-ho! I thought—cats are the women of the animal world!

So when I finished reading the article, I scanned it for a few passages where I could make some substitutions, say, “men” for “dogs” and “male” for “canine,” and “women” for “cats” and “female” for “feline,” among other swaps. It worked like a charm.

For example, a section heading titled “Dogs as the default”—I changed it to “Men as the default.” See? Women and cats are in the same boat, second to their male peers. Men, dogs—they are the baseline.

Now, let’s consider this paragraph, which I have amended accordingly:

Over the last few decades, medicine has made enormous strides . . . . But female medicine has lagged behind its male counterpart, and it is not always easy to provide evidenced-based medicine for women. “It’s still considered a bit of a niche interest,” said Dr. Karen Barry, a surgeon with a focus on female health.

No kidding! The article continues:

Historically, many doctors essentially treated women as small men, borrowing tests and treatments developed for male patients to care for female ones. Even in medical school, where students train for all sorts of specialties, men have long been the default.

Yep, and there’s more.

Over time, it has become increasingly clear that what works for Robert may be worthless, or worse, for Tricia . . . . “It’s not reasonable to assume that everything that works in a man will work in a woman,” says Dr. Bruce Korneich. “There’s a lot we need to learn.”

Well, duh. But

Is that because society simply places less value on the lives of women than on men? “Maybe there are biases against cats,” Dr. Korneich said.

For sure. However,

The situation does seem to be improving, albeit slowly, experts said. Some medical schools are increasing their investment in female health, and clinicians are trying to build stress-reducing, female-friendly practices. And more scientists are probing the the genetic and environmental causes of diseases in women.

Finally.

Anyway, I got a lot more out of this article than I expected. It expanded my understanding of “black box,” and it gave me an opportunity to find some parallels with and solidarity in the animal world. Go, cats!

It also made me look forward to the day when I see an article saying that neither cats, nor women, remain a medical “black box”—or, in fact, that they are, just the kind containing all the answers.

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