The lack of females in basic research was highlighted by the Atlantic today.  Melina R. Kibbe, MD and Teresa K Woodruff, PhD, two of the co-authors of a study published in Surgery this month, reported that 22% of the publications in five high-impact surgical journals between 2011 and 2012 did not specify  the sex of their animal subjects, and of those that did, 80% only used male animals.

Last night I watched American Ninja Warrior because Internet sensation Kacy Catanzaro, a 5 ft, 100 lb athlete, was the only women competing in the American Ninja Warrior Finals. Despite 2 years of training, she simply could not complete the “jumping spider” obstacle part of the course last night.   In the replays, you could see that her legs connected well with  the walls, but her arms could not span the gap adequately.   Evidently she worked hard on this task and likely made it during practice but men (or women) with wider arm spans have a greater likelihood of connecting with a wall with ‘all fours’.

Melina Kibbe, MD  reported in a new study that surgical researchers rarely use female animals or cells in the published studies—despite a huge body of evidence showing that sex differences can play a critical role in medical research.  “Women make up half the population, but in surgical literature, 80 percent of the studies only include males,” said Kibbe.  Published Aug. 28 in the journal Surgery, the study follows a “60 Minutes” segment aired in February that featured Dr.

Today’s speaker bio is Kyle Orwig, PhD, from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Orwig will be giving a talk at the conference entitled: Stem Cell Therapies for Male Infertility.