#Medicine and racism

[atavist]

An ob-gyn in Virginia performed unnecessary surgeries on patients for decades. He took their reproductive organs, gave them false cancer diagnoses, and did other terrible harm. When his victims learned the truth, they fought back. Issue no. 146, DAMAGES, is now available: 

[Debra] requested her medical records and was stunned to find discrepancies with what Perwaiz had said to her during appointments. Most glaringly, she didn’t see any mention of precancerous cells on her cervix; the tests Perwaiz performed on her had come back normal. “If I was normal,” Debra said, “why did I have a surgery?”

There were other inconsistencies. One form from an appointment described Debra complaining of back and pelvic pain, which she told me she never did. Another document dated the day before her surgery stated that she “insisted on having those ovaries removed through the abdominal wall incision and not vaginally,” and that the “consent obtained after entirely counseling the patient [was] for abdominal hysterectomy.” In fact, she had requested the opposite surgical approach, and she recalled no such conversation with Perwaiz; the only time she’d spoken with him in the lead-up to her procedure was in passing in the hospital hallway.

Debra was sure she had a malpractice case. She went to several lawyers, but none of them would take her on as a client. “So many men—man after man saying, ‘You had a decent amount of care, and that’s all you’re afforded,’ ” she said. Frustrated, she came up with a new plan: “I said, ‘Alright, I’m going to learn how to sue this bastard myself.’ ”

[mindblowingscience]

Imagine your child has broken a bone. You head to the emergency department, but the doctors won't prescribe painkillers. This scenario is one that children of color in the U.S. are more likely to face than their white peers, according to new findings published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. Researchers reviewed dozens of recent studies looking at the quality of care children receive across a wide spectrum of pediatric specialties. The inequities are widespread, says Nia Heard-Garris, a researcher at Northwestern University and a pediatrician at Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, who oversaw the review.

Continue Reading.

[spooniestrong]

[reasonsforhope]

"In cities across the country, people of color, many of them low income, live in neighborhoods criss-crossed by major thoroughfares and highways.

The housing there is often cheaper — it’s not considered particularly desirable to wake up amid traffic fumes and fall asleep to the rumble of vehicles over asphalt.

But the price of living there is steep: Exhaust from all those cars and trucks leads to higher rates of childhood asthma, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and pulmonary ailments. Many people die younger than they otherwise would have, and the medical costs and time lost to illness contributes to their poverty.

Imagine if none of those cars and trucks emitted any fumes at all, running instead on an electric charge. That would make a staggering difference in the trajectory, quality, and length of millions of lives, particularly those of young people growing up near freeways and other sources of air pollution, according to a study from the American Lung Association.

The study, released [February 28, 2024], found that a widespread transition to EVs could avoid nearly 3 million asthma attacks and hundreds of infant deaths, in addition to millions of lower and upper respiratory ailments...

Prior research by the American Lung Association found that 120 million people in the U.S. breathe unhealthy air daily, and 72 million live near a major trucking route — though, Barret added, there’s no safe threshold for air pollution. It affects everyone.

Bipartisan efforts to strengthen clean air standards have already made a difference across the country. In California, which, under the Clean Air Act, can set state rules stronger than national standards, 100 percent of new cars sold there must be zero emission by 2035.

[Note: The article doesn't explain this, but that is actually a much bigger deal than just California. Basically, due to historically extra terrible pollution, California is the only state that's allowed to allowed to set stronger emissions rules than the US government sets. However, one of the rules in the Clean Air Act is that any other state can choose to follow California's standards instead of the US government's. And California by itself is the world's fifth largest economy - ahead of all but four countries. California has a lot of buying power. So, between those two things, when California sets stricter standards for cars, the effects ripple outward massively, far beyond the state's borders.]

Truck manufacturers are, according to the state’s Air Resources Board, already exceeding anticipated zero-emissions truck sales, putting them two years ahead of schedule...

Other states have begun to take action, too, often reaching across partisan lines to do so. Maryland, Colorado, New Mexico, and Rhode Island adopted zero-emissions standards as of the end of 2023.

The Biden administration is taking similar steps, though it has slowed its progress after automakers and United Auto Workers pressured the administration to relax some of its more stringent EV transition requirements.

While Barret finds efforts to support the electrification of passenger vehicles exciting, he said the greatest culprits are diesel trucks. “These are 5 to 10 percent of the vehicles on the road, but they’re generating the majority of smog-forming emissions of ozone and nitrogen,” Barret said...

Lately, there’s been significant progress on truck decarbonization. The Biden administration has made promises to ensure that 30 percent of all big rigs sold are electric by 2030...

Such measures, combined with an increase in public EV charging stations, vehicle tax credits, and other incentives, could change American highways, not to mention health, for good."

-via GoodGoodGood, February 28, 2024

[starswallowingsea]

insane how anthropology majors will have entire classes about how biological race isn't a thing and here's why but it's still very much a social construct and impacts peoples day to day lives and that needs to be acknowledged. also race based science is a fucking lie and a load of horseshit made by eugenicists to try and kill off everyone they didnt like.

and then you look at people in medical school who still believe that black people have denser muscles because of a study that hasn't been updated in a hundred years and absolutely refuse to interact with social sciences on this issue

anyway congrats to the american pediatrics association for finally saying they're no longer doing race based medicine this past summer. hopefully other organizations will follow soon

[oldtvandcomics]

I think I have identified one of the best things ever

Historic horror. The monsters are fictional, but the true horror is in the society. All the atrocities described really happened, the horror elements just heighten it. Queer protagonists with intersecting marginalized identities, also chosen to highlight the horror.

I want more. I need more. Does anyone know more books like these two?

[et-excrucior]

So I’m going to highlight something I’m not sure people who like skeletons and curiosities think about often:

the human skeletal remains you see for sale in oddities shops were invariably grave-robbed.

I worked with human remains in an academic research context in the US for more than a decade. One of the first things I tried to teach my students was respect for the remains in our collections, not only because they were people, deserving of dignity in their death, but also because most of the skeletal remains in academic teaching collections were not donated voluntarily. In most cases, we have no idea exactly where they came from or to whom they belonged.

Historically, there has been a huge international trade in human skeletal remains for teaching medical students. The trade reached its peak in the 19th Century and continued for much of the 20th, and while ostensibly the practice was banned in India in 1985, it does still exist illegally. In the US and Europe, most of the remains in teaching collections were sourced from India through bone traders. Bone traders were (are) lower caste people charged with disposing of human remains—often by cremation, but also by interring in graves—but instead of doing so, sold the remains on to medical schools in the US/Europe through the intermediary of anatomical and medical supply companies. These anatomical specimens are the remains of people who were, unknowingly and without consent of their loved ones, denied their humanity in death to satisfy the appetite of the West for anatomical specimens, despite the remains of their own people being considered largely sacrosanct.

Which leads me to my next point: this practice originated under British Colonialism in India. I hope I don’t need to draw this point out, but objectification of these remains by medical students and researchers is a furtherance of the Western colonial project and othering of people of colour. As medical students, we’re trained to divorce ourselves emotionally from the remains we learn from in the name of professionalism. Medicine can often be confronting, and it serves patients and doctors alike to be able to continue working calmly and objectively in the face of those challenges. But in a world where empires and scientific disciplines have been (and continue to be) built on a legacy of scientific racism and dehumanisation, it behooves us to consider exactly how those teaching specimens were acquired—and how they came to be for sale.

Any human skeleton or human bones you see for sale in oddity stores are invariably retired teaching specimens, or were otherwise originally purchased through an anatomical specimen supply company that leveraged bone traders for acquiring their wares. In other words, those remains were grave-robbed, or stolen from funeral pyres and morgues. It is vanishingly unlikely that they are remains of known, ethically-sourced provenance like informed donation. If they were, they would not have been relinquished to the general public to be sold for profit. There would be contractual obligations that dictate how those remains would be managed once they need to be retired from teaching/decommissioned.

Please keep this in mind when you see human remains for sale in oddity shops. Buy plastic or ceramic teaching models instead. Don’t unwittingly continue creating a market for stolen human remains.

[johnny-depplyloveyou]

I know there are many bad takes about Gale on this site, but the worst takes I’ve seen on another social media site in another language are much more abhorrent than anything here tbh, the recent one I’ve seen even gets some popularity among his “fans”... They were basically saying it’s Mystra who made him the humble man he is now, without her influence on him he would be as egotistical as in his god ending, and more than a hundred of reblogs are all thanking Mystra for “training her lapdog so well” for them🤢

Did we even play the same game? Isn’t his god ending a direct result of Mystra making him think he will never be enough as he is, and he can only find his self-worth through gaining more power? Didn’t Tara say he’s not himself anymore and she would no longer be his companion in his god ending, she knew him long before Mystra made him her chosen, he was powerful enough before his relationship with Mystra, if he’s anything like god!Gale at the time wouldn’t Tara just leave him? I’d imagine he would have been more confident and had a more stable self-image if Mystra had never contacted him, therefore he didn’t even need the Gale of Waterdeep persona. He would always have been Gale Dekarios in that timeline. And people glorifying Mystra’s grooming and abuse towards him and unironically calling him “her lapdog” is just... I have no words. But what do you expect from an online space that’s infested with terfs and radfems? They just won’t recognize or acknowledge any abuse from women towards men...

[brazilspill]

Lol retard imagine thinking anyone cares about you're retarded monkey ass culture that gave the world such innovations as the "Brazilian butt lift". Imagine living in a "country" renowned for its tranny prostitutes

If we're monkeys we're some damn smart monkeys, seeing as we've invented

Chest photofluorography for screening for tuberculosis

The Jatene procedure for arterial switch operation (a type of open heart surgery)

The first scorpion and spider antivenoms (in 1908 and 1925)

Caller ID

The wristwatch

Phone cards for payphones

Voting machines

Radiography (x-ray images)

Rice strainer

The Kinect for X-Box

3D cinema

The artificial heart

The most green light bulb in history

Havaianas flip flops

Automatic transmission

Typewriters

The solar bottle bulb

The first radio transmission

Two kinds of martial art (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Capoeira)

The portable stereo cassette player

The Walkman

Hot air balloons

The first plane able to do unaided takeoff and flight (the Wright brother's plane needed a catapult)

Brain-Machine Interfaces

and discovered

The pathogen, vector, host, clinical manifestations and epidemiology for Chagas disease

The pathogen for epidemic typhus

The disease cycle for bilharzia

What about you? what have you invented?

Or are you not as smart as us monkeys?

[ptseti]

In case Y'all didn't know, now you know. RIP Sister!

[factoidfactory]

Random Fact #6,576

Reports of unfair treatment by a health care provider due to race and ethnicity persist among Black women with higher incomes and are particularly high among those who are younger and those with darker skin tones.

[giulliadella]

Maybe I should stop telling people that I'm a biologist. I had a guy try to explain to me how Black and White people are actually different species because Black people can't donate bone marrow to White people and vice versa.

And I was like ???

Buddy, not every person can donate their bone marrow to you, you need an extremely close match, which usually means someone from your family. Like, of course that an Italian won't be a bone marrow donor to someone from DR Congo like what???

I tried explaining him that and he told me that all biologists are stupid because they just follow what Darwin said and support woke ideology. At that point I gave up.

[mindblowingscience]

Black children may have more severe asthma episodes than white children but are less likely to be transported to the hospital by emergency medical services (EMS), according to a new study. A baseline understanding of how prehospital treatments and transport for children with asthma varies by patient race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status will aid in future research and efforts to improve equitable pediatric asthma treatments, the researchers say. Asthma, a lifelong disease with symptoms that include wheezing, shortness of breath, and tightness of the chest, affects about 25 million people in the United States and is a leading cause of death among children. Non-Hispanic Black children are about three times more likely to die from asthma-related causes than their white counterparts, according to 2020 data.

Continue Reading.

[ladyy--lazarus]

Just MENTIONING indigenous medicine practices to white people who have NO knowledge of it is a quick way, I've unfortunately & innocently learned, to witness a solid glimpse of their capitalist white supremacy. Wooooooo!! They'll say they're a liberal witch while laughing at you talking about real energy exchanges in life and argue indigenous medicine isn't what it is.

These encounters catch me off guard, but becoming grateful that they show me people's true colors. Fuckin yiKKKes & get the fuck away from me. Ugh.

[safirefire]

the violence used in the colonies isn’t being “brought back home” it was developed here against Black and Indigenous people first

[cupiare]

this school really deserves its impending doom bcs management is soooo tone deaf “but why do our students choose to go to uni in their own city and out of the 2 they choose the non russell group one why aren’t we doing something to support them to aim higher 🤔” could it possibly be that this school is in one of the most deprived areas of the city/nationwide and thats a significant factor affecting academic achievement so students default to the uni w lower entry requirements theyre likely to get into? or maybe that our predominantly immigrant students and their families don’t share the culture of moving out and living independently at 18? that their immigration status and overseas qualifications affect their entry requirements ? that many of them are responsible for their families and don’t want to leave them? that its more affordable to stay home and not be in even more debt by taking out a maintenance loan to stay alive? the girls who aren’t allowed to leave home before marriage? what a truly confounding phenomenon that our students don’t go to a russell group uni it must be a very bad look that we get 90% students in higher education or formal training after college but not the ‘best’ choice. But what do i know i guess !