Political Quotes

“I am really very pleased to sponsor tonight's special order on women's health with my colleagues Nancy Johnson, Louise Slaughter, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, and so many of our colleagues who are here this evening. The Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues has spent a number of years attempting to address the neglected women's health research at the National Institutes of Health. The caucus asked the General Accounting Office in 1989 to investigate the NIH policy regarding the inclusion of women in clinical studies. Women had been routinely excluded from many studies, such as the Physicians' Health Study which studied the effects of aspirin on heart disease of 22,000 male physicians. Another study, the Multiple Risk Factor Inventory Trial, a 15-year project studying the risk factors for cardiovascular disease, included 13,000 men and no women. In 1990, the GAO reported that the NIH had made quote, little progress in implementing a 4-year-old policy to encourage the inclusion of women in research study populations. The caucus in 1990 introduced omnibus legislation, the Women's Health Equity Act, which included the establishment of an Office of Research on Women's Health and the requirement that women and minorities be included wherever appropriate in research studies funded by NIH.”