It’s the Science

[philip964]

I don’t even know what to say.

[Paladin]

Yeah, that article does leave me almost speechless!

It is saying that racism caused "starkly high rates of COVID death in Black communities"... WOW. Just WOW.

In a magazine called "Scientific American"???

I can say for a fact that in Dallas the homeless, as a high risk group, tended to get better medical care for COVID than the general population. All courtesy of our tax dollars.

And as I pay a disproportionately high portion the the tax burden to the city, and have more potential COVID exposure than most, my mayor didn't help me get the vaccine at all: Dallas Mayor Requests ‘Disproportionately Affected' Minority Communities Be Prioritized for Virus Vaccine

[PUCKER]

Years ago (1960s until the late 1970s) my Dad worked for SA as a salesman (selling advertising space - he was a "space salesman")...before they were "woke / liberal"...they actually had some great content - especially if you look at the archives from the late 1800s/early 1900s. My Dad had the opportunity to travel all over the world because of his job...he went to china in 1980 before it was "open" - the chinese were copying the magazine, so the SA ownership decided to partner with the commies and at least have them put it out correctly....interesting stuff. One of his neatest accounts was Jack Daniels, just a tiny map dot in TN...that had to be pretty cool...making the drive from Chicago to Lynchburg with just a map. I've done it with a GPS...and that was hard enough! LOL

[srothstein]

This is what happens when we allow people to speak in areas other than where their expertise is. The doctors MAY have some expertise in forensic medicine, though I doubt it (I did not read the bios of any of the authors of the article - or even check if they were there). Any doctor thinks he can speak on all things medical and they are almost as bad as lawyers on thinking they can speak on other areas as well. But medicine is a large and complicated field, where most doctors will admit they specialize in a specific area and are not qualified to talk about other areas. For example, if you ask a pulmonologist to speak about measles or other children's diseases, he would normally tell you to go find a pediatrician. Certain fields, and epidemiologists jump to mind, think that they are qualified to speak on anything that is a widely occurring event, even if it is not a medical event. This is how we hear that "gun violence" or "opioid addiction" are epidemics and public health issues.

But in this article, the doctors want to say that the lawyers are deliberately misinterpreting the medical information and they use legal information and language. The term "but for" is a legal term used to help fix causation for legal purposes and is not a medical term at all. In reality, it can not be used in medical cases because it presumes to much that is not true. Another example of the problem in their logic is insisting that coronary disease increases the odds of a heart attack over a long period of time, not over seconds. Thus, a heart attack can not be attributed to the coronary disease being a contributing factor. But every heart attack happens over a period of seconds. Does this mean that hardening of the arteries is NOT really a factor to take into account?

If they had just wanted to argue over how to interpret the results of the autopsies, I might give them some credence. I would listen more if they had experience in forensic medicine. But the way the article is honestly just virtue signaling at its worst and is truly embarrassing to Scientific American for publishing it.

[OneGun]

Here is an interesting quote

We wish to remind fellow physicians that medical science has never been objective. It has never existed in a vacuum; there have and will always be social, political and legal ramifications of our work.

No, medical science is supposed to be objective. Does the patient have cancer? Yes/No? There are only two options. Ramifications are will the patient die and is there a treatment?

Then there is:

Medicine requires inclusion of the social context of disease in order to uphold its sacred oath of doing no harm. If we focus only on molecular pathways and neglect to articulate the role of structural inequities—of racism—in our country, our reports on the causes of death and injury in our patients will erase the roles of their oppressors.

Did the patient die from the gunshot wound to the head during a carjacking at a gas station? How does the fact that the patient worked as a receptionist at a medical clinic for $10.25/hour alter the cause of death? The patient died because they were a receptionist??

I don't understand this SA article at all. Politicians, lawyers, activists always spin the truth, and that will never change. So, now medical science is going to render medical judgments in light of people's social, racial, economic context??

[chasfm11]

"We saw what we saw." Obviously the writer has never been to a magic show or followed criminal cases was witnesses swear that they saw things that they didn't. We did see the officer kneel on the man's neck. We may or may not have seen the officer kill the man with his knee.

https://www.forcescience.org/2017/03/wh ... -asphyxia/