3 ms·
You're right that race often has a small (but statistically significant) affect, because of all of the confounding variables. Imagine that you're a hospital wh
by sjducb 4y ago
You're right that race often has a small (but statistically significant) affect, because of all of the confounding variables.
Imagine that you're a hospital who takes predominantly black patients, if you could modify the standard treatment to reduce Adverse Drug Experiences by 5-10% would you do it? Or would you say that it's unacceptable to use race as a variable at all, and continue to give the black people the same treatment as white people, resulting in more Adverse Drug Experiences in your black patients?
You can say that Ancestry is better, but often neither you or the patient actually know their ancestry.
- fenomas 4y ago> Or would you say that it's unacceptable to use race as a variable at all, You're arguing against a claim that neither TFA nor anyone here made. TFA doesn't suggest doctors should ignore past research that examined race - it argues that future research should examine specific identifiers instead of made-up ones. > often neither you or the patient actually know their ancestry Sure - which is why using race as a proxy for ancestry is a bad idea. If a drug has known risks to people of West African ancestry, and you have a patient with unknown ancestry, then you don't know whether that drug presents risks to the patient. Whereas, if the research on that drug had only reported "risks to black people" without examining ancestry, then you would believe you could tell by looking at a patient whether the drug presented a risk - and you'd be wrong.