Science has not treated men and women equally. Often, with the excuse that women's hormonal cycle could distort results, clinical trials have been conducted only on men for convenience and to erroneously assume that the bodies' response was the same in both men and women. The result is that women are generally underdiagnosed and that on many occasions they receive treatment later – if they receive it –, have less access to care, and suffer more pain because their symptoms are not taken into account, because they do not fit with what men are said to feel. As Gemma Parramon, head of liaison psychiatry at Vall d'Hebron Hospital and author of the book Será por las hormonas,there are increasingly more studies that demonstrate, in different contexts, that women wait longer on public healthcare waiting lists or that there are more diagnostic delays even in diseases where it is fundamental to detect the condition in time.

As a predoctoral researcher, I study the aging of hematopoietic stem cells – the cells responsible for regenerating all our blood throughout life–. A few years ago, while observing these cells under a microscope, I noticed some strange differences between my samples. They were supposed to behave identically, as they all came from donors of the same age, but this was not the case. I remember a thought coming to my mind: "Are these donors of the same sex?". Until that moment, I had never asked myself this question. When I started reading the scientific literature, I realized this wasn't just my blind spot. For centuries, both basic research and modern medicine have operated under the premise of the "standard human": the Reference Man. This wasn't done as a conspiracy theory to exclude women from research, but out of a combination of convenience and practicality. Early medical researchers used military records of healthy male soldiers as a baseline; furthermore, scientists actively avoided studying female individuals, claiming that fluctuations in menstrual hormones would distort the data. This bias was so profound that, even in basic research, female mice were systematically excluded.

When we're sick, the doctor prescribes a pill, but we rarely think about how that drug got to us. The process begins with scientists studying a library of chemical compounds to choose the most suitable one to solve the problem while causing minimal side effects. To achieve this, they conduct an initial experiment on cells growing in a culture dish, then on animals, and finally on humans. This is the protocol that has been used for decades and has allowed us to have pharmacies full of solutions for almost every disease. But there have always been critical voices questioning whether animal experimentation was truly necessary. The reasons are primarily ethical, related to the unnecessary suffering of beings capable of feeling pain. Lately, this viewpoint has gained influence, and some countries have begun to take steps to eliminate these studies altogether.

We live in very turbulent times that also affect scientific progress and the generation of knowledge. How do we confront future pandemics? How do we mitigate climate change? How do we search for new energy sources? The role of science is a subject of debate around the world precisely when global challenges demand joint responses based on scientific evidence. And, paradoxically, science and the scientific community are under severe attack.