The victim is guilty

Our society in many situations tends to blame the victim. Questions are raised whether this occurs more commonly with women and what its effects are. An examination of the treatment of women as patients may help answer these questions. In 1971 twice as many men as women were on chronic hemodialysis, raising the possibility of different allotment of medical resources and different admission criterion for this very expensive therapy. This example only indicates that women may be treated differently. The following commentary indicates women may be blamed for their illness. A prestigious medical journal has published articles claiming the clinical syndrome, Iceland disease, is really epidemic hysteria. One of the three main reasons given for such a claim is that it occurs primarily in women. Aside from the fact that many physiologic diseases do have skewed sex ratios, one wonders why it is considered inappropriate for a physiologic disease to have a male/femal ratio different from 1.0 yet not so for a psychological disease. Once women are put into this category, in essence blamed for their illness, there will be no more search for pathology that might be corrected. they may undergo detrimental therapy, in this case removal of their uteri-a hysterectomy, probably in the true sense of the word.