False Diagnosis

When it comes to gender, doctors don't play favorites.

Cathy Young from the May 2001 issue

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The critics are also put off by the alarmist language of the Men's Health Act, which opens with the declaration that "A silent health crisis is affecting the health and well-being of America's men." By most measures, the health and well-being of all Americans are better than ever. The bill also notes that the life expectancy gap between men and women has grown from one year in 1920 to almost six years in 1998. Yet, apart from the fact that both sexes have gained more than 20 extra years of life over the same period, this assertion overdramatizes the reality. Women already outlived men by an average of three to four years by 1910 (the 1920 figure was a fluke). And now the longevity gap is not widening but shrinking -- from 7.8 years in 1979 to 5.6 years today -- due partly to inroads against heart disease in middle age.

Moreover, the men's health movement dogma that men's shorter life expectancy gap is due to neglect of men's health rather than biology is as unreasonable as the feminist dogma that all sex differences are a social construct. It's true that this gender gap didn't show up until the 20th century -- mainly, Kadar suggests, because infectious diseases used to kill off a lot of people before they reached middle age, when men's greater susceptibility to heart disease and cancer manifests itself. He believes that, while women's greater average longevity may be partly due to the fact that women are more active in seeking medical help, to suggest that changes in health care can eliminate this differential is simply misleading.

Generally, men's heath advocates have steered clear of the gender antagonism that has often marked women's health activism; they rarely miss an occasion to stress that improvements in men's health will benefit women. Still, they can lapse into bitter rhetoric that eerily echoes the feminists. A passage from an article by a men's rights activist recently posted on the Men's Health America message board asserts that "we simply don't care much about men" and deplores "the devaluation of male lives."

Most critics of the women's health movement find that the male version of the victim mentality isn't much better. "I think the partisan approach to medicine leads us to places where we shouldn't be going," says Meinert. "This approach doesn't benefit us as human beings."

Apart from these philosophical concerns, there are reasons to worry that, like its female counterpart, men's health advocacy may end up putting "sensitivity" toward men above sound medical judgment. In a parallel to the mammography debate, men's groups champion universal, regular prostate cancer screening for men over 50, even though the controversy over its benefits and risks is far from resolved.

"When it comes to America's health- care crisis, it's about time we started treating men as well as we treat women," wrote Armin Brott, a Men's Health Network board member, in a recent newspaper op-ed. Does this mean turning men into another special interest group? Maybe it's time we started treating both women and men as human beings who deserve concern and respect, not paternalism and pandering.