Gender Discrimination in Government Funding for Cancer Research

[Lissa]

I came across this article and found it interesting. I thought that it might generate some thought provoking comments.

Government's Huge Cancer Funding Gender Gap

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimate that they will spend $4,446,000,000 in 2009 for female-specific cancers (breast cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, and “women’s health”) and $299,000,000 for men’s cancer (prostate cancer), which is a ratio of almost 15:1 in favor of women (see chart below). For spending in 2009 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Cancer Programs, the gap is even greater: they will spend $218 million on female-specific cancers (breast, cervical, ovarian and gynecologic cancer) and $13.245 million on prostate cancer, which is a ratio of 16.5 to 1 in favor of women

If you look at the article, make sure you read the comments posted below it; they also contain some interesting information.

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While the number of deaths isn't 15 to 1, Women due die about 2.25 times more due to cancers they get involving reproductive organs and breast. Take a look at the following:

https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cance...s-2017.pdf

In one of the tables it breaks down deaths by cancer types and about 72000 women die to cancer each year that is of the breast, cervix, and ovarian types. For men, it is about 28000 for breast and prostate (yes, men *CAN* get breast cancer, and every man should check themselves as well).

If you actually break things down, for breast cancer, about 10 women die to it to every man does. Likewise, if you look at the difference between Ovarian Cancer and Testicular cancer, again, it's about 30 women to every man.

The other thing have to wonder is how many men that are dying to prostate cancer don't get checked until it's too late as well.

Likewise, with women, the number dying to ovarian and cervix cancer has been dropping because of the HPV vaccine which more and more girls and young women are getting.

Another aspect to look at is that the budgets for cancer research aren't made the year they are spent, the budget is usually set a year or two before the money is actually allocated, so if you look at a couple more of the graphs, you'll note that certain cancers have been dropping over time, so the allocated budget may start to follow suit with said drop, so that's another thing to look at here.