“A news report suggests that men and women experience pain differently from one another, and that doctors should consider these differences when prescribing pain medications. When researchers administered the same dosage of kappa opioids a pain killer to 28 men and 20 women who were having their wisdom tooth extracted, the women reported feeling much less pain than men, easing of pain lasted more for women.This research suggests that kappa opioids be given to women during pain a medication is required, whereas men must be given different kinds of medication. In addition, researchers should reevaluate the effects of all medications on men versus women.”




The news report came out with news regarding the pain experienced during medication by men and women. It suggests that men and women experience different orders of pain and accordingly medication should be done and also reevaluation of all effects medications on men versus women should take place. However, the argument is quite fallacious as it is based on some unwarranted assumptions and questionable evidence.

Firstly, it concludes the change in the medication on all the people based on a research on a few. The conclusion drawn is of universal nature and must be done on a whole range of people, and according to the strict norms of experimentation. Generalizing based on a small experiment in regard to extracting the wisdom tooth is hasty. It also fails to give the description of the people in the experiment. The men considered for the experiment may be of younger age and women may be of older age and so the latter were able to bear the pain. Sometimes other psychological factors are also at work. Habitual use of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and taking of tobacco reduces the effect of anesthesia. For example, a alcoholic needs more dosage of anesthetic compared to a sober. Based on these factors dosage of painkiller should be given disregarding the individual differences.

Moreover, the argument assumes that men and women are not identical in all aspects and so Kappa should not be given to men. It is illogical. In terms of medical sciences, the physiological structure is almost similar enough to have same medication for all the diseases. Thus the argument ignores the very basic similarities between men and women or should we say human beings.

Having considered all the factors we conclude that giving different medications for men and women is quite fallacious and unscientific. The argument would have been cogent if the validity of the research, description of the people on whom the experiments were conducted, and any other experiments were conducted to test this phenomenon were provided.