Textbooks use white men as ‘universal model’

Images of white men predominate in western anatomy textbooks, which present them as a “universal model” of the human being. This is the main conclusion of a study that has analysed 16,329 images from 12 manuals currently recommended by 20 of the most prestigious universities in Europe, the United States and Canada.

According to the study, by María José Barral, a medicine professor at the University of Zaragoza, people of Caucasian ethnicity were the only ones represented in nine of the 12 manuals (all the European ones and half the North American ones), and were in the majority in the other three.

“Medical research in terms of the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases has been focused on this model of white, heterosexual men, who are a minority on this planet, and this does not reflect true diversity,” Professor José Barral said.

The study also revealed disparity when it came to representation of the different sexes. The six North American manuals studied used male bodies in 17% of cases and female ones in 5% to illustrate “neutral body parts”, while the six European ones used male images 12% of the time and female ones only 2%.

“Each body has individual features, and the more you see the more points of reference you have – this is an advantage in clinical practice,” said José Barral. “We’re not dealing only with diseases, but people with diseases.”

José Barral says many of the doses for pharmaceutical drugs have been calculated using this body model as a basis, without taking differences into account, and that this is only now being corrected. “You are prescribed a dose for another body,” she stressed. “Using only one body type as a model and treating the rest as variations is dangerous for health.”