In a clear case of racism in medicine, black stroke victims were one-fifth as likely as whites to receive emergency blood clot-dissolving therapy at 42 U.S. academic medical centers, researchers said on Thursday. [...] "I think it may be subconscious and I don't think it's malevolent. I think it may be related to the perception that African-Americans are less comfortable taking risk with medical therapies," Johnston added. "That's not an excuse. That doesn't excuse it. But it potentially provides an explanation that's a little less caustic." [...] He said the study found no reason to believe that black patients were less likely to want the drug. No black patients refused the treatment, while three whites did. Other minorities were given the drug at about the same rates as whites, the study found. The bias against blacks was seen in all regions of the country except the Southeast.
That last line is one of the more deeply ironic things I've seen in a while.
I will ... agree that the bias is probably unconscious. That said, with no reason to believe that blacks are likely to refuse the drug, and no instances of blacks refusing the drug in the study, then the explanation that blacks are less comfortable with experimental treatment fails, doesn't it? How can you tell if someone will be uncomfortable with a treatment if you never ask them? Even if it is unconscious, at some level, these doctors--all doctors, apparently--are making the judgement that saving black people is somehow less worthwhile, or rather, that black people are less worth saving. That they aren't going to make the simple effort of giving them a single injection, a single medication.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!