I'd like to compare how much is spent on men's healthcare research
versus women's healthcare research. I have a bet with my girlfriend.
She say's women's healthcare has been ignored in years past in favor
of using funding to research men's health issues. I find this hard to
believe but can't prove it.

Your girlfriend has it backwards. This comes as a surprise to me, but
a GAO report indicates that, in the United States, more than twice as
many research dollars are directed at women's health issues as are
spent on issues specific to men.

"The formation of the federal Office on Women's Health (OWH) a decade
ago has brought immeasurable benefit to American women through its
numerous outreach and awareness campaigns. Ten years later, health
advocates are asking for a similar office for men.

The need for an Office of Men's Health is acute, and the evidence that
men's health is being ignored can't be ignored... Indicative of what
activists call men's 'silent health crisis' is the way research and
outreach on prostate cancer, which is as likely to kill the average
American man as breast cancer is to kill the average woman, has been
underfunded. Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer
in men, accounting for 36% of all cancer cases. An estimated 180,000
men will be newly diagnosed this year, and 37,000 will die.

However, the federal government spends four times as much on breast
cancer research as prostate cancer research, and the money raised by
private charities for breast cancer is estimated to outnumber that for
prostate cancer 20 to 1."

Glenn Sacks
http://www.glennsacks.com/mens_silent_health.htm

"Prostate cancer makes up 37 percent of all cancer cases, yet receives
only 5 percent of cancer research funding. According to a Government
Accounting Office report, more than twice as many research dollars are
spent studying women's health issues than on those specific to men. In
an effort to address these issues, Congressman Randy Cunningham
(R-Calif.) and Senator Michael Crapo (R-Idaho) introduced legislation
this year to establish an Office of Men's Health at the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services."

Argus Courier
http://www.arguscourier.com/columns/weaver/health611.html

"Another issue of the [ Men's Action Network] is men's health,
particularly funding for research into prostate cancer.

'For every four women who get breast cancer, three men get prostate
cancer, yet the amount of money being spent on research is nowhere
near equal,' says Rogers.

National Cancer Institute figures show 46,000 women died of breast
cancer last year, and 40,400 men died of prostate cancer. In 1994, the
last year for which figures are available, the NCI records show $267.3
million spent on breast cancer research, and $56.8 million studying
prostate cancer."

Men's Net
http://www.mensnettv.com/articles/some_guys_say.html

This disparity of spending is not limited to the United States. Here's
an article from the UK:

"The government spends eight times as much on women's health as it
does on men's, doctors said yesterday as they called for men's health
issues to be taken more seriously and treated more sensitively...

Research into prostate cancer receives just £37,000 a year, in stark
contrast to the £4.3m spent on research into breast cancer. And, while
there are 150 organisations linked to breast cancer, there is only one
highlighting prostate cancer."

Guardian Unlimited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,299038,00.html 

One rather surprising statistic is this: even though heart disease
affects more men than women, heart disease research targeted toward
women receives 40% more funds than does heart disease research
targeted toward men (most heart disease research, however, is not
gender-specific).

"In fiscal year 2000 the total budget for heart disease research was
$566.2 million, with $80.7 million(US) allocated for women, $56.9
million for men, and $428.6 million for both."

Anapsid: Gender Differences Affecting Health & Function
http://www.anapsid.org/cnd/gender/gender2.html

Perhaps your girlfriend's misconception on this matter is related to
another gender-related medical issue that has been in the news quite a
bit. There has been much discussion of the fact that, until recently,
many prescription drugs that entered the market were not tested on
women, even though women are known to react to certain drugs
differently than men:

"The 1980s saw the great awakening of mainstream medicine to women?s
health concerns. Feminist researchers began showering infamy upon
several influential studies that omitted women. Most surprising of
all, the first study of the role of estrogen in preventing heart
disease was conducted solely on men.Women have also been excluded from
drug trials even though women consume roughly 80 percent of
pharmaceuticals in the United States. Until the spring of 1988,
clinical trials of new drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) were routinely conducted on men. A 1992 study by the General
Accounting Office found that only half the drugs surveyed had been
analyzed for sex-related differences. Giving drugs to women at dosages
designed for men puts women at risk for overdosing... The net effect
of gender bias in medical research is that women suffer unnecessarily
and die. Adverse reactions to drugs occur twice as often in women as
in men."

Aventis: Putting Women on the Map
http://www.aventis.com/future/attachments/14425920040127133049.pdf

Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: "spent on research" + "women" + "men"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22spent+on+research%22+women+men

I hope this information will be useful. If anything is unclear, or if
a link doesn't work for you, please request clarification; I'll be
glad to offer further assistance before you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

Thank you very much for your answer.