Is There Any Problem with Gender-specific Medicine?

Abstract

Gender-specific medicine is a recent branch of medicine that investigates the role of sex and/or gender in human health and its implications for research, teaching, diagnosis, cures, therapies, and preventive strategies. Given the recent growth of this new sub-discipline, the chief aim of this paper is to evaluate, from an epistemological point of view, its pros and cons, and to eventually suggest some effective ways to advance and improve gender-specific medicine, together with medicine in general. The analysis will be divided into two parts: the first will focus on the role and position of females/women as doctors, and the second on the role and position of females/women as patients.