"...well researched, wonderfully truculent..."

—The New York Times Book Review

"Dusenbery's excellent book makes the sexism plaguing women’s health care hard to ignore."

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Within an organized, well-balanced combination of scientific and social research and moving personal stories, Dusenbery makes a convincing case for the need for drastic industry reform and clinical refinement."

— Kirkus

“...a tour de force, revealing the tracks of gender bias throughout our medical system.”

—Ms. Magazine

"Maya Dusenbery brings new life to one of the most urgent yet under-discussed feminist issues of our time. Anyone who cares about women's health needs to read this book." 

—Jessica Valenti, author of Sex Object: A Memoir

"Ever since the centuries of burning women healers as witches—because they taught women how to govern our own bodies, thus to control reproduction—the medical world hasn't included all of humanity. Doing Harm shows what is left to be done, and directs both women and men toward healing."

—Gloria Steinem

In Doing Harm, Maya Dusenbery weaves together scientific and sociological research, interviews with doctors and researchers, and personal stories from women across the country to provide the first comprehensive, accessible look at how sexism in medicine harms women today.

Doing Harm explores the deep, systemic problems that underlie women’s experiences of feeling dismissed by the medical system. Women have been discharged from the emergency room mid-heart attack with a prescription for anti-anxiety meds, while others with autoimmune diseases have been labeled "chronic complainers" for years before being properly diagnosed. Women with endometriosis have been told they are just overreacting to "normal" menstrual cramps, while still others have "contested" illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia that, dogged by psychosomatic suspicions, have yet to be fully accepted as "real" diseases by the whole of the profession.

An eye-opening read for patients and health care providers alike, Doing Harm shows how women suffer because the medical community knows relatively less about their diseases and bodies and too often doesn't trust their reports of their symptoms. The research community has neglected conditions that disproportionately affect women and paid little attention to biological differences between the sexes in everything from drug metabolism to disease risk factors—even the symptoms of a heart attack. Meanwhile, a long history of viewing women as especially prone to "hysteria" reverberates to the present day, leaving women battling against a stereotype that they're hypochondriacs whose ailments are likely to be "all in their heads."

Offering a clear-eyed explanation of the root causes of this insidious and entrenched bias and laying out its sometimes catastrophic consequences, Doing Harm is a rallying wake-up call that will change the way we look at health care for women.