In this op-ed, Rise Global Winner Diya Sreedhar explores how a dearth of research on women’s bodies has led to the continuation of women’s pain.
The baby’s tiny, malformed limbs trembled in her mother’s arms, a sight that haunted the halls of hospitals across the world. It was the 1950s, and the thalidomide scandal would go on to leave countless women devastated, their trust in medicine shattered. A drug advertised to help with morning sickness, among other ailments, thalidomide ended up causing limb deformities or death in at least 10,000 babies worldwide — though the total number is unknown.
In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration ultimately did not approve the medication, but as many as 20,000 American women had participated in trials run by a pair of pharmaceutical companies. The situation eventually led in partto the FDA’s decision to suggest excluding women of reproductive potential from the early stages of most clinical …