Live data from Hacker News

How Neglecting Minorities in Medical Research Has Led to Deadly Outcomes

hdphealth.com

131–140 of 155 posts

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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Racism is the simpler and blazingly obvious explanation, backed by endless reearch and even the most casual observation. Things that are wrong can be obvious to individuals and groups of people. It's certainly not obvious to half the country, and that "endless research" is tainted. How long do you get to keep your job in academia if you point out the primary drivers of black misery in the US (out of wedlock births,…

> It's certainly not obvious to half the country It's certainly obvious to the most of the U.S., and facts are not subject to a popularity vote regardless. > "endless research" is tainted Easily said, but completely unsubstantiated > How long do you get to keep your job in academia if you point out ... Can you substantiate that such a thing is true, and then answer your question? One thing that will lose you your job…

facts are not subject to a popularity vote

I seem to recall "scientific consensus" being important on certain things?

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

#132
post #123

https://www.propublica.org/article/nothing-protects-black-wo... This is a longer article on the subject of poorer health outcomes for minorities, covering the situation for black women and one family's experience, which is very much worth reading, but here are the key points: Statistics: * A black woman is 22% more likely to die from heart disease than a white woman * ...71 percent more likely to perish from cervical…

That was a fascinating, and heartbreaking, read. The statistics are astounding. I'm disappointed though that the author completely omitted any discussion of single-parent families. 66% of black families are single-parent vs. only 25% of white families. I would think that would have a huge impact on well-being and health of the mother, in general. Even just in terms of making time for doctor's visits, etc.

> I'm disappointed though that the author completely omitted any discussion of single-parent families ... I would think that would have a huge impact

Perhaps the author had no evidence of it. Is there any?

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ambiguity implies you are indeed saying that minorities dying is feature. > inconvenient 'problems' Calling people dying "inconvenient" implies that at best you don't think it's serious. Putting "'problems'" in quotes, implies that you don't really think it's a problem. Do you really want to say that deaths of people who are members of minorities is desirable, or at least not a problem?

Thank you for your interest. Respectfully, I said what I wanted to say. Your interpretation of my posts is not necessarily correct. Yes, I am being circumspect.

You're not being circumspect, because what you said initially was clear. I gave you a chance to take it back, and you went further. Also, anyone who equivocates on something like that rather than simply condemning clearly is promoting the idea; for example, if a public figure spoke like you, nobody would doubt what they mean and they would lose their job.

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

#134
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An incredibly complex issue. I'd be here all day trying to address it and my quibbles w/the article, e.g. "race" ≠ "ethnicity," nor is it uniformly defined across countries, since it's a (BS) social construct... In any event, my knowledge of the issue leads me to think that the outcome is more a feature than a bug. That said, while I think the article attempts to link (growing target) population size(s) with an incre…

If I were to cover every one of the points you called out in detail (which are all valid) I'd end up with an entire book haha.

> the points you called out in detail (which are all valid)

Do you really want to say this is valid?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16129426

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long do you get to keep your job in academia if you point out the primary drivers of black misery in the US (out of wedlock births, drugs, and violence) are self inflicted? It's almost as if the sins of the past affects the lives of people in the present somehow.

It's almost as if people like to use the sins of others long dead to excuse their own shortcomings. In any event, if free will isn't a thing, there's no point in trying to make the world a better place, right, so we should just leave things as they are?

You've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's an abuse of the site which destroys its main purpose, so we ban accounts that do it. Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, take its spirit to heart, and use HN as intended from now on?

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ambiguity implies you are indeed saying that minorities dying is feature. > inconvenient 'problems' Calling people dying "inconvenient" implies that at best you don't think it's serious. Putting "'problems'" in quotes, implies that you don't really think it's a problem. Do you really want to say that deaths of people who are members of minorities is desirable, or at least not a problem?

Thank you for your interest. Respectfully, I said what I wanted to say. Your interpretation of my posts is not necessarily correct. Yes, I am being circumspect.

Please don't do this here.

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

#137
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advances in personalized medicine can't come soon enough.

Cytochrome P450 is a family of closely related enzymes that are involved in drug metabolism. There are certain isoforms that have variants with wildly different activity in certain populations. In drug discovery we screen for their involvement and do not like to develop compounds that are metabolized by one of these isoforms because the variation in pharmacokinetics would be too huge. This is kind of the opposite of…

> This is kind of the opposite of personalized medicine, making response uniform across the population.

Which is a far more pratical approach.

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

#138
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect, the actual definition is "Majority minority" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_minority and yes those of us that are currently Minorities, would still be considered minorities in such a case.

According to the definition, the term applies when local majority is country's minority. If you're no longer country's minority, you cannot be majority-minority.

This reminds me of a man in the UK, or African ancestry, but who had never been to Africa (or to the US). Americans repeatedly insisted on calling him an "African American".

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your interest. Respectfully, I said what I wanted to say. Your interpretation of my posts is not necessarily correct. Yes, I am being circumspect.

You're not being circumspect, because what you said initially was clear. I gave you a chance to take it back, and you went further. Also, anyone who equivocates on something like that rather than simply condemning clearly is promoting the idea; for example, if a public figure spoke like you, nobody would doubt what they mean and they would lose their job.

I'm not much for spelling everything out.

The OP seemed to understand what I was saying. We engaged in civil discourse and I learned something. Seriously, did you digest our dialogue before you drew your conclusion about my post(s)?

Frankly, you jumped to a conclusion, and having read some of your other posts, I decided to respond as I did thinking that you might realize that your interpretation was wrong. Guess not.

Honestly, anyone familiar w/even a smattering of (past or present) American approaches to science/medicine involving "minorities" shouldn't be responding the way that you are.

> or example, if a public figure spoke like you, nobody would doubt what they mean and they would lose their job.

Guess, we'll be talking about President Pence any day now, right? Suppose, Woodrow Wilson's name will be taken off of all those schools and other buildings currently named after him, right? No more reverence for "Indian Killer" Andrew Jackson?

You are entitled to your opinion, but your opinion is not automatically fact.

Hope that clears things up for you a bit.

Cheers.

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

#140
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your interest. Respectfully, I said what I wanted to say. Your interpretation of my posts is not necessarily correct. Yes, I am being circumspect.

Please don't do this here.

I'm sorry. Do what?
Post reply on HN