Congratulations, your uterus is not a Roomba
I have spent the last week walking around with the specific unhinged energy of someone who has just connected the final string on their conspiracy board. The book. The paper. The billing codes. It all links up. Bear with me.
I’ve been reading Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez, which everyone should read immediately if they’ve ever cared or plan to care about data. Spoiler alert: women have not been part of the data for centuries. And we pay for that with our time, our money, and our lives, all because society is built around a default human named Some Guy.
Then last week, one of my top five medical journals, The Lancet walked in carrying my final corkboard pin.
PCOS — polycystic ovary syndrome — has officially been renamed PMOS: polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome. If this sounds administrative, let me tell you, it is NOT.
Because the “cysts” were not actually cysts. They were arrested follicles. But since the name pointed everyone toward the ovaries, the entire medical system followed the map: referrals, research, treatment, insurance codes, all of it.
Generations of women were essentially told: wow, your ovaries sure are being dramatic. Maybe try losing weight.
When in reality it is a complex endocrine and metabolic disorder affecting the entire body.
And medicine has an absolutely unbelievable track record of not giving any thought to women.
Hysteria comes from the Greek hystera, meaning uterus.
The ancient Greeks believed the uterus could physically migrate through the body in search of moisture. Up toward the liver, maybe take a left at the lungs. Hippocrates recommended directing strong smells at the vagina to lure it back into position. Perfume down low, something terrible near the nose, so it would flee downward.
The uterus, notably, does not have legs. It was not roaming the body like a glitchy Roomba (Woomba?) that keeps bumping into the coffee table.
Oh but that was so long ago, I hear you thinking.
In 1977, the FDA formally recommended excluding women of childbearing age from clinical trials.
Formally. Recommended.
Not “we forgot.” Not “recruitment challenges.” An actual institutional decision that the best way to understand women’s bodies was to not.
This policy lasted until 1993, which is a long time to approach half the population like a software compatibility issue. It’s giving “we’ve tried nothing and are all out of ideas.” Like the Democrats. But I digress.
So that was the map. Doctors trained on it. Institutions formed around it. The most astonishing part is not that they were wrong. It’s how confidently wrong they were.
But we must give credit where it is due. Science does something beautiful: it admits the map was wrong.
It did not happen because someone at The Lancet woke up one morning and thought, hmmm, maybe we should check. Lol if only.
It happened because researchers, clinicians, and patients, many of them women who had spent years being told their condition was mysterious and probably just hormonal, pushed for an international evidence review. More than 6,000 studies later (not an exaggeration, can you believe?!), the conclusion was that the name was wrong, the diagnostic criteria were wrong, and the harm had been real and measurable and terrible.
Progress. Eventually. Yay.
We can admit that is worthy of admiration in a world where few institutions can own up to being wrong
However, we are also allowed to be furious that “women are not a niche expansion pack for men” had to be discovered in installments.
This is not a niche problem. It is the problem. And my girl Caroline is one of the countless humans writing this wrong.
Waiting for the baja to blast,
xo,
Saana
I think a follow-up article with more details might be helpful to women.