WomenHeart.org Astonishingly Sexist

WomenHeart.org, like all other health advocates for women, sounds off about women's heart disease:

• “Within one year of a heart attack, 38 percent of women will die compared to 25 percent of men.”

• “Women are almost twice as likely as men to die after bypass surgery.”

• “Women are less likely than men to receive beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors or even aspirin after a heart attack.”

• “Heart disease is more likely to be treated accurately in men than women.”

• “Heart disease is more likely to strike — and kill — more American women than men.”

These alarming statistics — all true — are repeated over and over by women's advocates and the generally unquestioning media. Hence a gospel: Women's heart disease is undertreated and thus deadlier than men's, so women are more in need of campaigns to improve preventative measures and raise awareness of their risk.

But despite the statistics being true, the gospel is false. Why? Because WomenHeart employs its statistics misleadingly.

Take “Heart disease is more likely to strike — and kill — more American women than men.” WomenHeart omits why more women die (about 6,400 more¹): At age 64 and above, when both sexes are at their greatest risk of the disease, women outnumber men by roughly five million².

To “prove” women's heart disease is undertreated, WomenHeart says, “Within one year of a heart attack, 38 percent of women will die compared to 25 percent of men,” and that after an attack “women are less likely...to receive...even aspirin....” WomenHeart doesn't say, however, that heart disease typically afflicts women later in life. “Almost three-quarters of women who die of heart attacks,” says author Warren Farrell³, “are 75 or older; by this time, the average man has been dead for three years.” At these ages, women are frailer and less likely to survive an attack. Many may have old-age complications that preclude even aspirin therapy.⁴

Is women's heart disease deadlier? Ponder other statistics that WomenHeart was careful to omit: Heart disease strikes men 10 years sooner⁵ than it does women, and kills them at a higher rate at every age. Before age 65, men are three times more likely than women to die of a heart attack. Even above age 85, when the disease kills more women because they outnumber men, it kills men more frequently⁶. Compare the sexes' heart-disease death rates per 100,000 population:

  Age        Male      Female

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

85-plus  6,313.3    5,913.8

(Source: U.S. Statistical Abstract, P. 28 of 32, Table No. 105 - Rates of death from heart disease per 100,000 population in 1999 )

Notwithstanding men's higher death rate -- much higher before old age -- WomenHeart appears to think raising awareness of women's heart-disease risk is more important than raising awareness of both sexes' risk.

Indeed, contrary to popular belief, awareness of men's risk has never been overly high. As late as 2002, for example, when women's risk was becoming more widely publicized, lack of awareness apparently caused Ed Bradley of CBS's “60 Minutes” to receive quintuple bypass surgery almost too late: Evidently neither he nor his initial doctors considered heart disease as inducing the chest pain that Bradley at age 61⁷ had complained about for weeks and which is the most common symptom of a heart attack. If poor awareness could be experienced by this extremely sophisticated man — a member of the age/race group whose heart-disease death rate is higher than for women ten years older — it can be, and is, judging by the statistics WomenHeart ignores, experienced by many other men.

Which sex do you really think needs to be made more aware of heart disease (or any disease, for that matter), when you consider this: Women visit the doctor nearly twice as often as men for preventive care, according to a 2001 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To me, the very definition of preventive care is raising awareness of one's health threats and risks. (See also the federal government's Office On Women's Health, which says, "...[W]omen are more likely to obtain preventive services, with almost one in five women's visits for prevention purposes." 

“Men have risk factors that they're unaware of, then they suffer a premature heart attack.” -Stephen Nicholls, M.D., Cleveland Clinic,  Ohio; Reader's Digest, February 2009

Though heart disease hits men harder, the belief that it hits women harder because of undertreatment has spawned countless campaigns to help women only. A few:

• “Go Red For Women”: It sponsors, among other things, free heart screenings for women⁸.

• Heart centers for women⁹: Dozens exist, no doubt with more planned, despite adequate hospital heart care being available to both sexes.

• The Heart Truth¹⁰: The federal government's campaign to raise awareness of heart disease in women, encouraging a public policy of prioritizing attention to women's heart disease over that of men's.

• State action: An Illinois bill would require all health insurance polices in the state to cover preventative tests for women's heart disease. (Another example of public policy shifting)

• National action (another example): The proposed HEART for Women Act¹¹ (S. 573/H.R. 1014): The act “can help millions of women live longer, healthier lives.” Never mind this: “At every age,” says researcher David Williams of the University of Michigan, “American males have poorer health and a higher risk of mortality than females." (American male taxpayers would provide most of the act's funding, because they on average pay more taxes.)

Since these campaigns are motivated by WomenHeart-type stats, they ultimately owe their existence to this travesty: Women's advocates have capitalized on women's greater longevity and bigger old-age population — or, worded another way, on men's average earlier demise which is due largely to men's earlier and deadlier heart disease! Because the travesty has not found its way to the public's attention — thanks in large part to a generally pro-female media — the public is unaware that the advocates are capitalizing in this fashion, the campaigns get away with assisting only the group less at risk and essentially functioning as if every woman were more at risk of heart disease than every man.

Suppose women on average died sooner than men, developed heart disease a decade earlier, and succumbed to the disease more often at every age. Suppose society ignored this, claimed men's heart disease is undertreated and deadlier, and funded awareness and prevention campaigns for men only. What might WomenHeart call this? How about mind-numbing sexism on a breath-taking scale?

(See my more in-depth commentary about women's heart disease.)

tags: go red  womens heart disease  womenheartorg  ed bradley  black men  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit