How medicine discriminates against non-white people and women • Hacker News Board

Re: How medicine discriminates against non-white people and women

#21

Post by manicdee » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

rexer wrote: post #18

dhosek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There'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).

Your 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?

Because 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.

Re: How medicine discriminates against non-white people and women

#22

Post by xnx » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

rexer wrote: post #18

dhosek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There'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).

Your 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?

I'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.

Re: How medicine discriminates against non-white people and women

#23

Post by manicdee » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

Leparamour wrote: post #14

worik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the very first paragraph of that story it reported on the failure of a common and important diagnostic tool to function properly on people with darker skin. The Economist is catching up

Is that why The Economist has a whole separate category for reporting on "Race and sex bias in medicine"?

What is your complaint?

Do you feel that medical science is pure and unbiased and this category of reporting is not required?

Re: How medicine discriminates against non-white people and women

#24

Post by kjeetgill » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

Leparamour wrote: post #16

mfer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There 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.

> 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.

I 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