Creating & Expanding The Binary World of Medicine

The title of this episode was initially intended to be “Why Women Outlive Men.” But with an exceptionally well-versed guest like Dr. Marianne Legato, our conversation took a turn that went above and beyond what I’d hoped to dive into. Today we have a very special episode where we discuss how Dr. Legato helped shift the very nature of medicine from being dominated by the male biology to include that of women. She then discusses the current shifts in medicine intended to break down the enigma of gender fluidity and create a word of medicine that includes nonbinary bodies. Dr. Marianne J. Legato is a pioneer in the field of gender-specific medicine. She led the effort to establish sex and gender as important variables in the way we think not just about the experience and treatment of disease, but also health and lifestyle. She began her work in gender-specific medicine by authoring the first book on women and heart disease, The Female Heart: The Truth About Women and Coronary Artery Disease, which won the Blakeslee Award of the American Heart Association in 1992. Because of this research, the cardiovascular community began to include women in clinical trials affirming the fact that the risk factors, symptoms, and treatment of the same disease can be significantly different between the sexes. Her latest academic textbook, The Plasticity of Sex, on which this book is based, won a 2021 PROSE Award in the category of biomedicine. She maintains one of the only gender-specific private practices in New York City, and she has consistently been named one of the “Top Doctors in New York for several decades. Who’s Who has just cited her for a lifetime achievement award.  Connect with her at www.gendermed.org