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How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

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Re: How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

#61

Post by tzs »

mcguire wrote: post #5

" Not only do minorities get asthma at a higher rate, but [UCSF] pulmonologist Dr. Esteban Burchard ... has found that ethnicity is the most important factor in determining if a patient will respond to asthma therapy. Unfortunately, for the most most commonly prescribed asthma medication, Albuterol, 67 percent of Puerto Ricans and 47 percent of African-Americans show no improvement when taking it, yet Albuterol works…

It sounds horrifying, but actually is kind of meaningless as written.

Imagine two worlds:

World #1 (the horrible world): medical research neglects black people. They only bothered to develop an asthma treatment that works on white people.

World #2 (the reasonable world): medical research is careful to make sure they cover all groups. They developed several asthma drugs. None works well across all ethnic groups, but there is a good one available for each ethnic group.

In both of these worlds the most commonly prescribed asthma drug will be one that works on the vast majority of white people and does not work well on black people.

What they need to include to make the point they are trying to make is how the less commonly prescribed asthma drugs do on different ethnic groups.

Re: How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

#63

Post by matthew3 »

gozur88 wrote: post #52
charlescearl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or generally if historically oppressed minorities get poorer health outcomes. It seems a complex question that has many facets. Two tickets that come to mind: 1. When US sociologists and political scientists talk about “systemic and structural racism” this is one of the manifestations. That in general the well being of Native peoples in the US, of African Americans is devalued. It is witnessed in the exclusion in dru…

>When US sociologists and political scientists talk about “systemic and structural racism” this is one of the manifestations. Which has always bothered me, since there are other explanations (lifestyle habits, genetics, poverty) that would explain the difference, in whole or in part. It's a politically convenient assumption that goes contrary to Occam's Razor.

Something like the negative effects of concentrated poverty seems to fit Occam's Razor well enough. "The most obviously-shared attribute amongst clusters of extremely poor minorities across the country is the clustering of poverty, and here are some potential causal ways this can lead to different lifestyle habits, different levels of education, different access to health care, etc."

That seems way more likely to me than oft-hinted-at-by-the-"politically-incorrect" "here's a cluster of people who all made the same bad decisions or were victims of the same bad luck in the same way, for no underlying reason other than genetic factors also associated with the color of their skin." That's pretty damn "politically convenient" if you're not in the minority population, too - "hey guys, it's not our fault! They just suck!" Hard to imagine something more politically convenient to the lucky than that.

Re: How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

#64

Post by albertgoeswoof »

blaurenceclark wrote: post #32
indubitable wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the CDC, the average weight [1] of a black woman aged 20-39 years in the US is 179 lbs, 158 lbs for a white woman. Converting to BMI (to adjust for height differences), the story is the same with an average 30.2 vs 26.7, or 'moderately obese' versus 'overweight.' Remove any notions of race and compare the stats based entirely on equivalent weight/BMI I you will find nearly all differences would disappear…

Then why is asthma medication less effective on Latino's and African Americans? And why did my friend have to visit 5 doctors and it wasn't until he found the Black doctor that his skin condition (which is common to only African Americans regardless of weight) was properly diagnosed and treated? I'm not saying weight is not a problem, I come from a black family where unhealthy diets are a tradition (but that leads ba…

> that leads back to the fact that traditional african american diets come from the slave food which was unhealthy but taken in as cultural meals

Is this really true? What foods did slaves in the US eat that are still regularly eaten today? What about black Americans that didn’t descend from slaves, are they not affected?

Is it not more likely that this effect is due to economic reasons (ie in recent years low quality food is significantly cheaper to obtain)

Re: How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

#65

Post by yipopov »

blaurenceclark wrote: post #4

I'm the founder of HDP Health, if you have any questions or want clarifications please ask away!

What's the relevance of the minority status?

Would a drug proven effective for whites and ineffective for blacks in the US suddenly become effective for blacks and ineffective for whites if administered in Zimbabwe?

Or do you mean "minorities" in the "there are too many minorities in my waterpark" sense?

Re: How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

#66

Post by albertgoeswoof »

yipopov wrote: post #62

Good luck defending this as long as it's deemed political wrongthink to say there are any biological differences between races. If everyone is the same, why bother with diverse studies?

Biological differences are only one part, the socio-economic issues that lead to people being mistreated because of their race are a huge problem

Re: How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

#68

Post by to3m »

yipopov wrote: post #65
blaurenceclark wrote: post #4

I'm the founder of HDP Health, if you have any questions or want clarifications please ask away!

What's the relevance of the minority status? Would a drug proven effective for whites and ineffective for blacks in the US suddenly become effective for blacks and ineffective for whites if administered in Zimbabwe? Or do you mean "minorities" in the "there are too many minorities in my waterpark" sense?

The article mentions in the first sentence that it is about North America. So presumably it is talking about specific apparent population groups that are minorities in North America? With this in mind, you can probably imagine some examples. But the first sentence does include some, if you're unfamiliar with America.

Re: How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

#69

Post by blaurenceclark »

tzs wrote: post #61
mcguire wrote: post #5

" Not only do minorities get asthma at a higher rate, but [UCSF] pulmonologist Dr. Esteban Burchard ... has found that ethnicity is the most important factor in determining if a patient will respond to asthma therapy. Unfortunately, for the most most commonly prescribed asthma medication, Albuterol, 67 percent of Puerto Ricans and 47 percent of African-Americans show no improvement when taking it, yet Albuterol works…

It sounds horrifying, but actually is kind of meaningless as written. Imagine two worlds: World #1 (the horrible world): medical research neglects black people. They only bothered to develop an asthma treatment that works on white people. World #2 (the reasonable world): medical research is careful to make sure they cover all groups. They developed several asthma drugs. None works well across all ethnic groups, but t…

Your assumption in #2 is incorrect. What actually happens often is the doctor doesn't know what to prescribe the patient and the patients quality of life suffers. As well as stated in my article, one of those alternative treatments "For another type of asthma treatment, long-acting bronchodilators, blacks are 4 times more likely than whites to die or experience serious complications when using them."

And that's not the only one.

https://www.medicine.wisc.edu/asthmanet/bard

Re: How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

#70

Post by blaurenceclark »

yipopov wrote: post #62

Good luck defending this as long as it's deemed political wrongthink to say there are any biological differences between races. If everyone is the same, why bother with diverse studies?

Attacks from everywhere haha. I'll keep educating anyone I can on this until the day I die!
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