[ad_1]
While race-based medicine may sound like a malpractice of the past, racially biased medical technologies are still lurking within today’s health care realm.
Given the common misconception that race is a biological inheritance rather than a political relationship, it is not a complete surprise that some of the devices used to assess patients’ well-being are racially biased.
Despite the Human Genome Project’s findings that human beings are 99.9% identical in their genetic makeup, today’s medical technologies miss this truth. Instead, medical instruments are part of what University of Pennsylvania law professor Dorothy Roberts suggests is the re-creation of race in the 21st century.
According to Kara Harnett, a writer for the magazine Modern Healthcare, medical devices that produce racially biased results lead to inconsistent results among minority patient groups, including people of color.
Notably, this disparity shows no negative impact for white patients, suggesting that race-based medicine impedes minority groups from the opportunity to receive appropriate patient care.
A recent example of this inequity emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when inaccurate pulse oximeter readings overestimated the oxygen saturation levels among Black and Hispanic patients, decreasing their eligibility to receive treatment for cases of severe COVID-19.
The pulse oximeters were intrinsically biased against people of color. And mortality rates among Black and Hispanic COVID-19 patients were significantly higher than those of white patients.
If health care professionals are supposed to evaluate patients concerning their well-being, then why are racially biased medical technologies in the hands of our supposed “clinical champions?” Using and developing these biased medical instruments to assess patients’ potential treatment options negates the goal of delivering quality health care.
To understand why some of today’s medical devices are inherently racially biased, we must go back to their origins.
The spirometer, used by race-based medicine pioneer Samuel Cartwright in the 1850s, is a prime example of racially biased medical technology. It was used to study the difference in lung capacity between enslaved Black people and white people. Cartwright’s instruments determined that there was a 20% difference (which he termed a “deficiency”) in the lung capacity of Black people, amplifying the idea that race is a key contributor to lung capacity.
Because Cartwright’s work reflects racial differences in lung capacity, medical technologies with a “race correction” have become widely used in medical practice. The race-as-biology paradigm masks the concern for how this racial framework continues to infiltrate the U.S. health care system.
As clinical professionals utilize these medical instruments and develop technologies, society continues to accept race as a biological determinant of health outcomes, instead of challenging this discourse.
If racially biased medical devices contribute to poorer outcomes among minority groups, there must be revised criteria for developing medical technologies with race-based guidelines.
With revised guidelines, health care professionals could avoid reverting to race-based medicine and advance greater equity in medicine and public health.
But continuing the current utilization of such medical instruments risks distrust between minority patient groups and doctors, increasing instances of iatrophobia, the fear of doctors.
Because device measurement inaccuracies persist, we must take the next steps toward revising these guidelines.
Within a health care system that has a deep, racially biased history, it is our duty to advocate for ourselves as patients and against race-based medicine being applied to those around us.
Considering the guidance by American Public Health Association Executive Director Georges C. Benjamin to treat public health as a “second job,” we should challenge technologies that undertreat and misdiagnose minority patient groups, and we should improve public health by advocating for an end to racially biased medicine.
Bryn Fitchett is a senior at Franklin & Marshall College.
[ad_2]
Source link
