SOME RESPONSES TO MEN'S HIGHER RATE OF DEATH FROM HEART DISEASE

EXAMPLES OF HOW MEN'S HIGHER RATE OF DEATH FROM HEART DISEASE IS DEALT WITH

Before going to the examples, fix firmly in your mind the sexes' rates of death from heart disease per 100,000 population in 1999, the latest year available for statistics:

        Age            Male         Female
      25-34           10.6            5.6
      35-44           43.3           17.6
      45-54          145.7          51.9
      55-64          391.6         167.5
      65-74          961.6         503.2
      75-84        2,308.9      1,562.5
      86+           6,313.3      5,913.8
      U.S. Statistical Abstract, P. 28 of 32, Table No. 105: Death Rates From Heart Disease  by Sex and Age: 1990 to 1999
Men, especially black men, die of heart disease at a much higher rate than women. So how do many women's health advocates and much of the medical community respond to this grim difference?
Here's how:
·     In 1998, a total of 794,867 persons were enrolled in heart disease studies sponsored by the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Out of basic fairness, you would expect that at least half of these persons, about 400,000 people, would be male. These were the actual numbers:
         Male: 251,500 | Female: 543,367
·    The following is a list of sex-specific publications on cardiovascular disease published by NHLBI. These publications are (or were) listed here.
Publications for Women:
1. Facts About the Women's Health Initiative
2. Healthy Heart Handbook for Women
3. High Blood Pressure in Pregnancy
4. Controlling High Blood Pressure: A Guide for Older Women
5. Controlling High Blood Pressure: A Woman's Guide 
6. Facts About Heart Disease and Women:
    Preventing and Controlling High Blood Pressure
7. Facts About Heart Disease and Women: Be Physically Active
8. Facts About Heart Disease and Women: Kicking the Smoking Habit
Publications for Men:
None
(Source: Carey Roberts, a researcher and consultant who tracks gender bias in the media and runs Men's Health America; for articles by Carey, see Men's News Daily.)
·    “The growing recognition of the differences in men and women with heart problems has led some hospitals, including Beaumont and St. Joseph Mercy in Superior Township outside of Ann Arbor [Michigan], to establish special heart programs for women." Source: Detroit Free Press, July 14, 2002
·    Dr. Judith Reichman has practiced obstetrics and gynecology for more than 20 years. She is a regular “Today” show contributor. She said, "To add cardiac injustice to cardiac injury, women are less likely than men to receive timely, lifesaving diagnosis and therapy, including ECG’s, stress testing, coronary catheterization (angiograms), angioplasty, clot busting therapy and bypass surgery. They are also less likely to be given post heart attack medications that prevent a second heart attack or to be referred to or complete a program of cardiac rehabilitation."
·    At Yale-New Haven Hospital is this statement: “About 29 percent of women under the age of 60 died within two years of having a heart attack, compared to 20 percent of the men.” I could not verify these percentages, but on the face of them, they present a gruesome picture for women who have a heart attack under age 60. The percentages sound bogus. In this age bracket, as in all other age brackets, men die of heart disease at a much higher rate than women, and under age 60 they die in much higher number. The statement by Yale-New Haven Hospital is designed to suggest that women who have heart attacks are neglected and undertreated relative to men with heart attacks. If anyone is undertreated, it is men, as a comparison of the sexes' heart-attack death rates plainly show.
·    From National Women's Heart Health Day Statistics:
An estimated 240,000 women die annually of heart disease, five times the number who die of breast cancer.
More women than men die of heart attacks within the first year of their first heart attack (44 vs. 27 percent).
More women than men will suffer a heart attack within four years after their first heart attack (20 percent vs. 16 percent). (Again, the reason for these occurrences is that women are older than men when having their first attacks. More women than men are fortunate enough to reach the age when both sexes are at the greatest risk of heart attack. In other words, men are penalized for dying sooner than women of other diseases. See Women’s Advocates Ignore the Main Reason More Women Die of Heart Disease Than Men.)
·    From Difference in a Women's Heart:
Women get their heart disease an average of 10 years later than men; however, younger (below the age of 50) women who do have heart disease have substantially higher risk of complications and death than men with heart disease the same age. (Apparently, though, this higher risk of complications and death don't translate into a higher death rate. See chart above.)
·    At Ask the Expert: Women's Heart Forum: Contrary to popular belief, every year heart attacks kill more women than men.
·    At Yale-New Haven Hospital: "Women develop heart disease at the same rate as men do, but they often show evidence of the disease 10 years later than their male counterparts." An outright falsehood! The phrase "show evidence" is purposely inserted here to make the public think women's problem with heart disease is not only equal to men's, but is more insidious (more difficult to detect, for example), and thus women's heart disease research deserves more funding than men's to combat the insidiousness. Again, which sex is dying of heart disease at a much higher rate? Which sex deserves more funding?
·    At Guidant: "42% of women who have heart attacks die within a year, compared to 24% of men." Sounds awful for women, doesn't it? That's the intended purpose. The vast majority of the women who die within a year of a heart attack do so because they are very old and frail, having outlived the average man by about 7-10 years.
And so it goes, at one site for women's health advocates after another. And it won't stop, because when it comes to caring for the sexes, ideological feminists and the mainstream media have taught us to care more for females than for males, whom feminists, the media, and the rest of society have in fact taught us to consider disposable. (See Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex.) The less caring about men is a sexism that virtually everyone accepts. This acceptance hits black men and other minority men especially hard, and may account for some of their violent behavior: "If no one cares for me, why should I care for anybody else."

See "Women's Advocates Wrong About Why More Women Than Men Die of Heart Disease."

tags: medical bias against men  heart disease  black men  

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