Eve's Rib: The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine and How It Can Save Your Life

Dr. Legato, the most respected voice in the nascent discipline of gender-specific medicine has written a book that can enlighten so many people. Unlike many books on "women's health" this book has the beauty of being inclusionary. The book is not only relevant to women, but is a helpful read for any husband, son, brother, or health care professional. I do not think that we have really understood what short shrift women have been given in formulating the treatment protocols for medical conditions. Hopefully this book and the science it heralds will help push the medical establishment to realizing that women are not just small men with different reproductive organs but are people with unique responses to drugs, and symptomologies that are necessary knowledge to have before anyone can make an accurate diagnosis. This book should be standard reading for every medical student.

Eve's Rib by Marianne Legato, MD is a groundbreaking book. In clear, easily understood language Dr. Legato spells out the myriad ways that gender influences our experience of illness, our response to medications and the expectations/biases of our physicians. She points out that when scientists performed research only on male subjects, and extrapolated their findings to women "they made a tremendous intellectual gaffe." Because women are not just diminutive versions of men. As Dr. Legato makes clear,their bodies and their response to disease are often very different from that of men - and not just in their reproductive organs. The field of gender-based medicine is still in its infancy but already some of the new knowledge that has been discovered is saving lives and improving the health care of both men and women. Just to cite one example, Dr. Legato relates how drug companies are now trying to design medicines to combat abnormal heart rhythms that can actually be caused by drugs that are effective in men, but dangerous for women. She details how every organ system in the body has features that are gender-dependent. And she points up how much knowledge is still to be gained. I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in human biology and in staying healthy.Barbara H. Roberts, MDDirector, The Women's Cardiac Center at the Miriam HospitalProvidence, RI