Only Men Used as Human Guinea Pigs in Clinical Trials? That's Sexism Against Women.

Harvard Magazine in a 1997 article titled "Chivalry and Science" complains that only men were routinely used as human guinea pigs in clinical trials and calls it this brand of chivalry a form of oppressive discrimination against women:

"Ah, chivalry. We know it as that noble male quality that obligated Saint George to endure a dragon's sulphurous breath so a fair maiden would go free. But chivalry's legacy has been mixed: while it may have opened a few doors for women, historically it has closed many more. And, unfortunately, chivalry has excluded women from serving as study subjects in most biomedical research."

http://harvardmagazine.com/1997/11/health.html

This was at the same time that clinical trials on drugs being used on women in the third world was being called unethical because the women were given placebos:

"The zidovudine (AZT) regimen used in the United States to prevent mother-to-infant transmission of HIV has not been feasible in the Third World because of its complexity and cost. But a U.S.-backed research initiative to test a simpler, less expensive regimen last year touched off a sharp debate about the ethical standards for clinical trials, particularly those in the Third World."

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-3.3/dalton.html

So when women were excluded from medical experiments it was called oppression and when they were included in medical experiments it was called oppression.