The National Institutes of Health … announced more than $10-million in grant supplements to bring gender balance to the subjects of medical lab work, its largest financial commitment to ending the research bias.
The awards, covering 82 recipients, come four months after the NIH—the world’s largest provider of money for medical research—promised to more aggressively tackle a longstanding tendency among scientists to overwhelmingly use male animals and cells in labs.
The grant recipients, at American universities and affiliated hospitals, represent a variety of the medical fields financed by the NIH, and their discoveries should promote greater awareness of the value of considering gender differences, said Janine A. Clayton, director of the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health.
Several advocates of gender-balanced research offered praise for the new financial commitment but warned that the overall campaign remained highly dependent upon the NIH’s aggressiveness in setting firm compliance rules. <Read more.>
Professor Van Ry 