THIS IS JUST A DRAFT. PLEASE DO NOT CITE IS THERE ANY PROBLEM WITH GENDER-SPECIFIC MEDICINE? by M. Cristina Amoretti 1 and Nicla Vassallo 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. 1. Clarifying what gender-specific medicine is Broadly speaking, gender-specific medicine is a recent branch of medicine 2 that focuses on the relationships between, on the one hand, sex and/or gender and, on the other hand, human physiology, pathophysiology, clinical features and the course of diseases. To put it another way, gender-specific medicine investigates the biological, physiological, cultural, historical, psychological, and sociological impacts/effects of sex and/or gender on human health and their implications for research, teaching, diagnosis, cures, therapies, and preventive strategies. Thus, the discipline attempts to answer the following and other, related, questions: When do sex and/or gender matter in medicine? How do they matter? 3 M.J. Legato gives the following succinct overview: gender-specific medicine «is the study of how the 1 For her own research, M. Cristina Amoretti gratefully acknowledges financial support from the grant POSDRU/89/1.5/S/63663. 2 The first center for gender-specific medicine was in fact founded in 2001 in New York. 3 See for instance: Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine, 2 nd edition, ed. by M.J. LEGATO, Elsevier, Amsterdam 2010; P.M. MCCARRICK, Gender Issues in Health Care, «Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal», III, 1995, pp. 1-14; Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?, ed. by T.M. WIZEMANN, M.L. PARDUE, National Academy Press, Washington 2001.