5 ms·
How medicine discriminates against non-white people and women
- colinprince 6y agohttps://archive.is/T5eae https://archive.is/T5eae
- idiot900 6y agoA dermatologist friend of mine trained in a virtually all-white area and then got a job in a place that wasn't. Apparently it was a significant adjustment caring for patients with darker skin.
- dhosek 6y agoThere's also a false belief, common among doctors and other medical professionals, that darker skin is thicker/tougher. (to be 100% clear, it only differs from lighter skin in pigment and no other characteristics).
- leet_coder_boi 6y agoI can't believe there are people that don't understand: the science gods have shown us the conclusive research! The only genomic difference between ethnicities is melanin!
- rexer 6y agoYour comment and the one you replied to don't make sense to me. How can skin only differ in pigment, but it also require additional training to care for skin of different color?
- manicdee 6y agoBecause it is a different colour, meaning that all the training you received learning focussed on different shades of pink no longer applies. Darker skin means the symptoms you are looking for are lower contrast and a different colour. It’s a simple case of repeating all that training against different skin colours. It’s often difficult for someone trained exclusively with pale skin to recognise something as obvious as sunburn on darker skin, for example.
- xnx 6y agoI'm guessing that identification of different skin conditions on skin of much higher pigmentation that what a dermatologist has been trained on is an obstacle.
- mfer 6y agoI was reading that testing often happens on men for medications because their biochemistry is fairly constant in a month. Fluctuating hormones complicated drug testing. This seemed to me to miss testing a scenario that affects about half the population.
- robertlagrant 6y agoIt's not a single scenario; that seems to minimise the complexity.
- mfer 6y agoThere are many scenarios because there are variations in our genetics. I was reading (I think it was the book The Innovator's Prescription) that a lot of medical R&D happens in the US. I wonder how that impacts this sort of testing. I bet that medical R&D happening in a more distributed nature around the world would engage more diversity for testing.
- Leparamour 6y ago> I bet that medical R&D happening in a more distributed nature around the world would engage more diversity for testing. Sure. Distributing the research and testing internationally would be the best case. But if you're only testing in one single place then not many locations are as ethnically diverse as US metropolitan areas.
- kjeetgill 6y agoI mean this as a sincere question and I get that their might not be an answer readily available but I've always wondered: How onerous is it really? What an I missing here? Not that pfizer is on trial here (maybe they do a good job, I don't know) but they have presence in diverse metropolitan cities[1]? I'm sure many others must too. There must be something more to this. [1] : https://www.pfizer.com/science/research-development/centers https://www.pfizer.com/science/research-development/centers
- Leparamour 6y agoEven The Economist is pushing Critical race theory (CRT) now. What a time to be alive.
- ska 6y agoThis comment seems to show a pretty fundamental misunderstand of what CRT is (or isn't), or this article, or both. The article is a bit fluffy, but some of the problems they are describing are well known in the industry (less agreement on what to do about it) and have been showing up in the medical literature for decades at this point.
- leet_coder_boi 6y agoska: everything in medical literature is fact and in no way fiscally motivated
- ska 6y ago> everything in medical literature is fact and in no way fiscally motivated It's hard to imagine a net financial benefit for many of the studies. Of course it's not perfect. But dismissing something like this out of had for what, (vague ideological reasons?) is irrational. There is good research in the area, and you are free to read it. There is some poor research in the area too, such is life. It's not even suggesting anything malicious, just that in many cases if you follow the easiest path in design and testing, you will end up biasing your inputs in ways that have impact. I have seen this play out.
- leet_coder_boi 6y agoA fiscally motivated piece of "journalism" is absolutely worth dismissal. solutions floated: #1 Double the diversity candidates in your testing pool (ie: use a testing group that it non-representative of any naturally occurring environment) #2 Use novel technologies like "real-time ultrasonic scanning" #3 "Transparency for medical algorithms" (sounds like a precept to industry regulation which is notoriously anti-competitive) Doesn't take a lot to imagine the biases at play here...
- leet_coder_boi 6y agoThey put this content behind a paywall because anyone with a brain (ie. would not give money to a racist propaganda outlet) is not part of their target audience anyways.
- leet_coder_boi 6y agoWhy are we not writing about the medical technology developed in racially homogeneous countries that are non-white! (~82% - Global Population Profile: 2002, U.S. Census Bureau 2004)