We Solved Erections Before We Studied Ovaries
I Wonder How Many Fewer Email Opens This One’s Gonna Get
Erectile dysfunction gets 6x more funding than ovarian aging.1
Guess which one we treat like a crisis?
Both matter. Only one got billions.
The way we prioritize, fund, and validate male issues over female ones - in research, diagnosis, and public health - reveals bias, not biology.
Yes, bros, your erections matter. Reproduction takes two (for now). But that’s not the point today. We’ve spent billions studying every mechanism of male arousal while ignoring the systems that determine when, whether, and how a body can create life.
One gets covered by insurance. The other gets called “elective.”
Even in respected longevity circles, I’ve observed that ovarian aging doesn’t get the same attentive listening the way other areas do. It’s not on roadmaps, not in pitch decks. No press. No urgency. Just background noise, both quietly acknowledged and ignored by men and women alike.
“There are more urgent longevity issues!” Like what?
I’m a Man, Why Should I Care?
Well, because up to half of infertility cases involve sperm. Because the entire reproductive timeline shapes society.
If we can preserve brains but not ovarian function, the longevity fantasy is incomplete. And if that’s not enough for you, then know that the systems that fail women always end up coming for everyone else eventually, women are just the clock that runs out first.
If you care about equity, autonomy, or the future of biology itself, then this is your issue, too. And if you don’t…
The Science Gap
We don’t really know how ovaries age.
Not the way we understand what happens when a heart skips a beat (hi 👋), or how cholesterol builds up in arteries, or how neurons misfire.
We know how to delay puberty, suppress ovulation and harvest, freeze and frame fertility as a lifestyle brand. But we still don’t know how ovarian aging works or how to stop it.
There are no universally reliable standardized diagnostic tests for ovarian aging.2
That’s what happens when no one funds the question. You don’t get bad answers, you get no data at all.
I’ve seen this up close, btw. A super fancy Santa Monica concierge cardiologist (translation: insurance not welcome, only cold, hard Amex) told me I didn’t have an arrhythmia…because he didn’t hear it with his stethoscope.
I’d seen it myself on an EKG two days earlier. I told him this. But because he didn’t detect it, it didn’t count. He said, “Stop worrying, it’s fine to continue as normal.”
If I had listened to him (and my insurance-issued cardiologist), I’d be dead.
That’s what systemic disbelief looks like. Just a quiet override.
The Data Bias Trap
As Nita Jain, Founder of Timeless Biosciences, points out in The Trouble with EHR Data that electronic health records (EHRs), the systems built to improve care and surface new medical insights, are riddled with garbagé (my word, not hers). The garbagé being incomplete, inconsistent or even inaccurate data. And even worse? Jain claims that one of the more significant issues with EHR is systemic bias: gender, racial and obesity.
This may show up in all the usual ways: women’s pain gets downgraded. Reproductive issues get misdiagnosed, dismissed, or filed under “anxiety.” The system doesn’t just miss us, it misrepresents us. And it does so by design, it’s a a consequence of how the system was built and what it is built for. As one commenter in her piece points out, EHRs were built for billing, not for patient care. You can’t track what you never intended to treat.
When the data is biased, the science built on top of it never stood a chance. It decides who gets funded, and whether ovarian aging is even recognized as a problem. Ovarian longevity research isn’t just underfunded. It’s structurally invisible.
Just Because The System Won’t Fix It, Doesn’t Mean No One Will.
While trad science slow-walks around ovaries, a fresh new wave of researchers and builders are doing what the system never bothered to do: funding it themselves.
No National Institute of Health (NIH) grants grind. No pharma buy-in. No pitch decks begging for relevance. Just money, mission and momentum, routed through DAOs.
DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) are community-run groups powered by blockchain.3 Instead of a central leader, members vote with tokens to fund ideas and guide direction.
Enter AthenaDAO, the FIRST decentralized community of researchers, technologists, entrepreneurs and advocates dedicated to addressing critical gaps in scientific funding and innovation in women’s reproductive health.
Since launching with a combined $350,000 grant, AthenaDAO has grown a strong community, hosted events and funded early science in reproductive biology.
They’ve harnessed web3 tools like NFTs and the $ATH token for governance, letting members vote, fund and shape projects in overlooked areas like menopause, PCOS, and endometriosis.
This isn’t just “femtech.” It’s real science, real funding and yeah, it’s just out here transforming women’s health research. Whitepaper’s live, if you're into receipts.
In fact, I was lucky enough to attend AthenaDAO Demo Day, a virtual showcase of seven early-stage startups, and “a glimpse into the future of women’s health education, research, and innovation.” Read their Demo Day Recap here.
Standouts and a post-demo highlight:
They’ve launched their first-ever decentralized clinical trial with Ovul, a saliva-based fertility tracker currently enrolling voluntary participants who want to contribute anonymized data and receive early fertility insights while supporting women’s health research. They are still taking participants!
ProFaM Brazil is now enrolling patients for ovarian tissue cryopreservation, a procedure that removes and freezes small strips of ovarian tissue for future fertility use. It’s currently reserved for cancer patients, with plans to expand to elective cases. This is a shift from reactive medicine to proactive choice, giving women the chance to act before biology decides for them.
A $1B deal between Gero.AI (a collaborator) and Chugai Pharmaceuticals (a Roche company) to co-develop aging-related antibody therapies. Why is it exciting? It’s among the first billion-dollar longevity deals, spotlighted by AthenaDAO’s DeSci community, leveraging AI to target the root causes of aging rather than just its symptoms. It’s decentralized innovation with big pharma’s resources.
Sign up to participate here.
And lastly, The Data and Wearables Report. A blueprint for community-sourced fertility data: anonymized cycles, hormone rhythms, real longitudinal baselines.
The kind of stuff you need to build actual diagnostics instead of flying blind. First-of-its-kind. Game ON. A quick-glance overview (image from report):
So Now What?
So now we stop pretending ovarian biology is a side quest. It’s not optional or niche. It’s not a lifestyle upgrade.
Ovarian longevity IS longevity.
It’s not just fertility; it’s brain health, bone health, metabolic health, generational health. Ovarian biology touches everything. So why isn’t it funded like it?
The system needs to catch up to the builders who already know it’s worth the work. And there’s just so much work to do.
This isn’t a woman’s issue. It’s a longevity issue. It’s A SCIENCE ISSUE. A future-of-everyone issue. Act accordingly.
This funding disparity is based on NIH grants for erectile dysfunction vs. endometriosis (2019-2023), a condition tied to reproductive aging. Menopause and ovarian aging receive even less. https://www.mckinsey.com/mhi/our-insights/closing-the-womens-health-gap-a-1-trillion-dollar-opportunity-to-improve-lives-and-economies
No universally reliable, standardized test exists for ovarian aging due to variability in AMH and AFC assays and limited predictive power for menopause timing, compounded by funding and access barriers. Deadmond, A., et al. (2022). Endotext. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279153/
Blockchain: Think of it like a shared online notebook that everyone can see but no one can erase. It keeps a permanent, secure record of transactions, whether that’s cryptocurrency (money), votes, or research funding, and helps people work together without needing a middleman.