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06 - Medically Underserved
23 Plays21 days ago
Combined analyses show that Black patients in America are 22% less likely than white patients to receive proper pain medication and are frequently on the receiving end of unconscious bias.
Fortunately, medical education is starting to address race. And outcomes will improve as a result.
However, racism at the federal level is driving devastating cuts to cancer research to address health disparities.
Failure to care for the most vulnerable among us is an indictment of a cruel society, that thrills at the pain of others, that revels in destruction and bitterness, that is perfectly fine to deny pain relief to people as long as they are not family or friends.
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Transcript
Defying Medical Odds
00:00:11
Speaker
The audience fell into a hush as she picked up the microphone to tell her story.
00:00:20
Speaker
She began by saying that as a black patient diagnosed as a child with sickle cell disease, she was not expected to live past the age of six years old.
00:00:31
Speaker
The doctors had told her parents so.
Impact of Grim Prognosis on Identity
00:00:34
Speaker
This is a chronic and lifelong disease and often has a sad outcome. And the feedback she received from the world was consistent with this message.
00:00:45
Speaker
No one would invest in her as a friend, as a student, as a team member, as someone who would be around next year.
Living Beyond Expectations
00:00:57
Speaker
What is your worth as a person if no one expects you to live? How do you form a stable identity when in the eyes of most people, you're already dead?
00:01:11
Speaker
She's now 34 years old. I was in awe of her grace and poise, her gentleness and fierceness and will to live on her own terms.
Racial Bias in Sickle Cell Treatment
00:01:23
Speaker
She recounted how hospitals unused to the presentation of a sickle cell crisis would tend to ignore or dismiss her symptoms. Despite the excruciating pain, there is no obvious external manifestation, no bleeding, no trauma, no broken bones, no stroke symptoms.
00:01:43
Speaker
The long history of medical racism informs the script. A young black person complains of pain and asks for serious pain medication. But the white attending physician, unfamiliar with this predominantly African American disease, suggests they go home, take some Tylenol.
Research Unveils Systemic Racial Bias
00:02:02
Speaker
Such patients are often flagged as drug addicts and denied treatment, resulting in many deaths. In one study, physicians were asked to estimate the pain level of patients.
00:02:13
Speaker
They frequently underestimated the pain of black patients. Another study showed that as many as half of medical trainees believe that black people are not as sensitive to pain as white people.
00:02:27
Speaker
These trainees were less likely to treat black people's pain appropriately. Combined analyses show that black patients in America are 22% less likely than white patients to receive proper pain medication and are frequently on the receiving end of unconscious bias.
Racism in Education and Research Funding
00:02:46
Speaker
Fortunately, medical education is starting to address race and outcomes will improve as a result over time. However, racism at the federal level is driving devastating cuts to cancer research to address health disparities.
00:03:04
Speaker
Misogyny and hatred of experts is damaging women's health, especially in red states, promoting chaos in scientific communities nationwide, forcing scientists to close their labs or drastically curtail their work or leave the United States entirely in order to continue their work.
Society's Indifference to the Vulnerable
00:03:27
Speaker
These themes are all interconnected with the punishing and self-destructive decadent attack on expertise, on infectious disease prevention, even on meteorology.
00:03:42
Speaker
Failure to care for the most vulnerable among us is an indictment of a cruel society that thrills at the pain of others, that revels in destruction and bitterness, that is perfectly fine to deny pain relief to people as long as they are not family or friends.
Fear in Black Communities
00:04:03
Speaker
Now we learn that federal ICE agents are terrorizing black American citizens of Somali origin in Minneapolis, cementing a structure of fear where no one feels safe to go to school, to go to work, or to a medical clinic.
00:04:22
Speaker
How does a child absorb the government's lesson that they are garbage?
00:04:28
Speaker
How do you live when people think you do not deserve healthcare?
00:04:33
Speaker
How do you live when people think you will be gone the next day?
Podcast Conclusion
00:04:48
Speaker
You've been listening to The Fifth Column, a series of podcasts documenting the intersecting stresses of our time. I'm Gerry Dennis. Please tune in again soon.
00:05:03
Speaker
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