The Fact
The NIH Revitalization Act, signed June 10, 1993, required the director of the National Institutes of Health to ensure that “women are included as subjects in each project” of NIH clinical research and that members of minority groups are included as well.
What This Means
Until 1993, there was no federal law requiring the nation’s largest medical research funder to include women in the studies it paid for. Much of what medicine learned before then was learned mostly on men.
Sources
- National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993, Pub. L. 103-43, title I, § 131, 107 Stat. 133 (June 10, 1993); codified at 42 U.S.C. § 289a-2. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/289a-2