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| Black America’s Death Rate: Diet, Lifestyle, Racism |
| Attend any local Cancer Awareness Program and
you will learn that “African-American men have the highest rate of prostate cancer in
the world,” but it is the statistics for other diseases, equally, if not more
alarming, that clearly spell it out - Black America is at risk, period. For any common
illness, disease, or potential hazard, the statistics show that Black people die daily in
America, in larger numbers than any other American group, occasionally more so than any
other people on earth. These data coincide with recent findings that racially based “inequity” affects the delivery of efficient healthcare services to Americans. This life-threatening issue deserves exploration, as poignant questions beg answers: what exactly account(s) for the excessive death rate among Blacks? Is it socio-economics, diet, genetics, lifestyle, as Dr. Arnold Oper suggests, or is it racism, system bias, institutional racism, genocide? Both the National Health Foundation and the American Cancer Society report African-American men evidence roughly 50 percent higher rates of cancer than Whites, yet the death rate for Black men, ages 35 to 49, is an astounding 175 percent higher than the death rate for Whites. The National Center for Health Statistics confirms that AIDS kills the highest number of young, Black men, between ages 25 and 44, at a rate four times higher than their White peers. Heart disease is touted as the number one overall killer, aside from Black-on-Black homicide, and the more recent, creeping scourge of suicide. Coronary heart disease takes out 70 % more mature Black women than Whites. The American Cancer Society reasons that roughly one-third of the Black American male population is obese. Drs. James Reid and Neil Shulman note that one in three Blacks have high blood pressure. They posit that obesity and high blood pressure render Black people more susceptible to cancer, heart attacks, and strokes than Whites. They theorize that Blacks are “predisposed to all of these diseases.” In fact, Dr. Oper announces, “If you are Black, and live long enough, you will get cancer.” Several studies suggest that there is a genetic basis for the risk factor differential between African-Americans and Whites. One study out of the Vascular Biology Research Center at the University of Texas, at Houston, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, points to an African-American blood-clotting gene “which may account for a six-fold increase in risk of heart disease among Blacks.” Such arguments ignore the other reality - cancer, heart disease, and stroke are also the leading health threats to white Americans. More like smokescreens, these rationales do not explain why Black infant mortality rates are 2.5 times higher than that of whites, and why Black women are more likely to die from breast cancer when the incidence of the disease is practically the same for the two groups. Dr. Eric Cameron, pediatrician at Joe Di Maggio’s Children’s Hospital, is uncomfortable with attempts to use the “predisposition to disease” theory to explain away the high death rates among Blacks. He worries this might serve to excuse, conceal shoddy medical treatment. Dr. Cameron explains, that all ethnic groups are susceptible to one or more diseases. “Blacks have sickle cell; the Chinese have liver problems; and whites suffer disproportionately from cystic fibrosis, and other congenital ailments.” Meanwhile, the Center For Disease Control asserts Black people are 2.5 times more likely to die of stroke than Whites, and the National Heart & Lung Institute (NIH) predicts that Blacks are more likely to die of sudden cardiac arrest. Excessively high death rates from a variety of causes would suggest that Black people are “predisposed” to a wider range of diseases. No, the “predisposition label” does not always fit. So, experts tender another explanation, “Black people die from cancer and other diseases in higher numbers than white folks, essentially because they are always diagnosed late; and in the case of cancer, the disease would have spread to distant sites.” These are the same healthcare practitioners who assured us that the health threats could be averted with due care, attention, regular check-ups, tests, and minor adjustments to diet and lifestyle. Did anyone mention poverty, access, lack of health insurance, welfare, Medicaid, Medicare, lack of education? The powerful, savvy Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, fell victim to leukemia at age 60. Patricia Roberts-Harris, ex-Dean of Howard University’s School of Law, later U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, was terminated at age 61. How is it possible that Blacks, a minority group, could lead the field of fatalities for every potential health threat known to man - AIDS, asthma, bronchitis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, the common cold, pneumonia, sickle cell, stroke, infant mortality – within the most technologically advanced nation in the world? Way back in 1951, William L. Patterson and Paul Robeson had petitioned the U.N. to consider sanctions against the United States government for genocide against Blacks. Malcolm X also made similar charges before the Organization Of African States in 1964, accusing the U.S. of violating the constitutional rights of African Americans. On May 16, 1997 President William Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore apologized to survivors of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study for the cruelty endured at the hands of the U.S. government. The President’s admission of the government’s role in the atrocities perpetrated against the Black participants in the Tuskegee Study, acknowledges, as did Hippocrates, that “medicine is of all the arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, . . . it is . . .far behind all the other arts.” Hippocrates wisely noted, “ . . .physicians are many in title but very few in reality.” Several recent studies confirm that racial bias stymies the efficient delivery of healthcare services, from the prescription of medications, to treatment and surgical decisions, to amputations, and referrals for organ transplants. Several studies attempted to assess the extent of these inequities. Here are some of the findings: Blacks are denied equal access; Blacks are less likely to receive health/survival enhancing medical procedures; Black women with ovarian cancer are less likely to have surgery than Whites; Blacks are 40 percent less likely to be referred for cardiac catheterization; Blacks with circulatory problems are twice as likely to have a leg amputated; Blacks are more likely to donate organs, yet less likely to receive a transplant; The youngest, healthiest Blacks are most likely to be denied a transplant; Whites are twice as likely to receive heart, lung, or liver transplants; Blacks are less likely to participate in treatment decisions. Researchers concluded that the healthcare system is unfair and that poor Americans are at a disadvantage.. Financial screening is a major factor, especially when patients require more costly procedures, such as transplants that run into hundreds of thousands. Besides, a patient’s income must fall under $650. for Medicaid to cover the cost of a transplant. Institutionalized racism also permeates the healthcare system. While some insist the system is prejudiced against Blacks, others believe this may be more of a social or class problem than a question of race, per se. Nonetheless, several studies concur that doctors treat Blacks differently from Whites, based on lingering biases in American society. However, researchers contend the difference in the way the two groups are treated, may not be deliberate. They say the doctors may display bias in decisions, based on qualitative differences in the doctor-patient relationship, and the physicians’ subconscious misperceptions of Blacks. Blacks also appear to harbor deep feelings of distrust, which would make for negative doctor-patient interaction. For starters, the University of Wisconsin offers classes, which alert physicians to the unhealthy, racial sentiments they subconsciously take to work with them. Regardless of occupation, status, or income level, African-Americans, like anyone else, are entitled to access caring medical personnel who will involve them in their healthcare goals. While we in America are conditioned to accept a patient’s inability to pay, as sufficient reason to bar him/her from access to medical care, this is not the standard among industrialized nations, where universal access to healthcare is now a recognized human right. Fortunately for those in need of a transplant, new federal regulations guarantee equal access to the transplant system. Experts have long promised that managed health care would help to reduce the inequity in the system by first, beefing up case management for patients with serious problems. HMOs must help to improve the overall quality of healthcare, while working to close the racial divide. Much like the Black experience with the justice system, and elsewhere in the American marketplace, the healthcare system favors the more affluent, informed citizen. Blacks, as healthcare consumers, must be alert and informed about their rights, and how the system operates to their disadvantage. Cameron and Oper acknowledge that there are bad doctors, and the fact that we may still be a long way from determining how much of the Black experience with healthcare is due to cultural differences, racism, or institutional bias. It would appear that Black America’s alarming death rate is a byproduct of all of the above; cultural differences, diet, genetics, lifestyle, socio-economics, racism, and systemic or, institutional bias – just short of genocide. James Sprang is an award-winning writer/editor who holds degrees in journalism, international relations, business, public administration, and social-science research. |
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