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So, I can often be found posting on here complaining about bias in medicine (although I disagree about some of the kinds of bias with quite a few posters here).
We do have something of an update to a long running story that’s worth sharing.
Meddit link for more discussion and detail: https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/1jotpzz/follow_up_on_the_study_showing_discrepancies_in/
Basically, awhile back there was a headline about how black babies received worse outcomes when care for by white doctors. Apparently, this went so far as to get cited in the supreme court.
Sometime later someone on Meddit (which is still quite pro-woke) noticed that they forgot to control for birth weight, which would likely completely kill the effect size (explanation: white physicians have more training and take care of sicker babies who have worse outcomes). At the time there was a significant amount of speculation essentially going “how do you miss this? That would be the first you would control for.”
Well, it turns out that someone filed a FOIA request and well, to quote Reddit:
“A reporter filed a FOIA request for correspondence between authors and reviewers of the article and found that the study did see a survival benefit with racial concordance between physician and patient, however it was only with white infants and physicians. They removed lines in the paper *stating that it does not fit the narrative that they sought to publish with the study.” *
While I often criticize medicine for being political, I’m often found here telling people to trust the experts when it comes to (certain aspects) of COVID or whatever, and well this kinda stuff makes it very very hard.
The initial findings were passed around very uncritically and sent up all the way to the supreme court.
How can people trust with this level of malfeasance? How do we get the trust back? How do we stop people from doing this kind of thing? I just don’t know.
From personal experience: you just wait a little. The medical establishment has the gigantic advantage of actually performing miracles every day. Doing that reliably certainly helps in (re-)building trust.
I used to be very skeptical, almost averse to what doctors and the medical establishment were doing.
But then they just healed a very annoying genetic condition I have, restored 100% of physical ability after life wrecked my body, I watched them save my child by emergency C-section, and a family member was diagnosed with advanced cancer. The last two were scary, of course. Seeing the medical machine throw its full weight towards you with urgency puts some real fear into you.
But it worked. Healthy son, cancer in remission with remarkably little side effects. So I had to admit: "OK, many of you actually know exactly what you're doing." And of course, they're pretty nonchalant about it. "Chances were decent to begin with, actually so much better than 10 years ago..."
Sure, the field is a mess and some skepticism is more than justified. But I mostly trust doctors again.
I love this comment, well said! Medicine does do a lot of amazing work.
My mother was saved of a stroke a few years back that would've killed her for sure just a decade earlier. It truly is amazing.
I think the flip side of this is important to hold onto when it comes to why so many people hate medicine.
For most people, the most important things that happen in their lives (aka life and death and the prevention of the latter) involve interaction with medicine.
When it goes poorly, that sticks and it hurts. If your mother passed away as a complication from a clot treatment (assuming ischemic stroke) you'd hate that intervention, and maybe even your doctor and healthcare. Maybe you have the wherewithal to know that's an emotional response - but it would still hurt and feel that way.
One invalidating interaction, one missed diagnosis or bad outcome...and suddenly the emotional connection to the idea that the system is useless and needs to be burned down is established. It's really hard to avoid and generates a lot of the ill feeling.
The opposite happens too! But you only have to get it wrong once and that's not avoidable.
For me, my defining moment when dealing with medical professionals was when I began having irregular heart rhythms, along with a boatload of other symptoms. Unfortunately, one of those symptoms was weight gain. Once that happens, doctors will not, in any way, listen to a single thing that you tell them.
Every time I would go to the doctor, they would tell me to exercise and lay off the junk food. The fact that I had completely cut out junk food and upped my gym routine to 90 minutes a day/5x a week sailed in one ear and straight out the other.
Eventually I collapsed at the gym and showed up at the ER with a 240 bpm heart rate. It turns out I'd had an autoimmune disorder for several years that had wrought absolute havoc on my body's symptoms. A doctor ran a simple, inexpensive blood test and had me diagnosed and medicated in a few days. All my problems went away and I lost 65 pounds in six months.
Every single one of those events could have been prevented if any doctor in a three year period had actually listened to me instead of telling me to go fuck myself.
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