Racism in medicine? Yup. we haz that

Many years ago, before Ireland became a land of immigrants, I was  visiting Ireland with a friend, and in rural Ireland, the kids would follow up, point and giggle and say "Sesame Street" then run away.

I asked her is it bothered her, and she answered: no. Here they point and say What is it. In the US they point and say oh no not one of them.

Racism is not just about race, but about economic structures, about cultural differences, and about differences in priorities for people.

And in medicine, the affluent mainly white idea that health is everything and that the disabled have a lousy quality of life so should be able to be helped to die, is just the tip of the iceburg of eugenics, that some folks are inferior.

This is more open in right wing discussion threads, but is often subtle in the left wing threads (where white upper class women show their superiority by tweeting and posting stuff that is anti religion, anti traditoinal values, and anti lower class people, and they don't notice that this includes folks of all sorts of races).

This interview is about racism in medicine, and how it is worse for those who are diabled, and how assisted suicide will become just one more means to oppress the poor and people of minority status.

it's not just about racism against blacks, since the mentally challenged, AmerIndians, Hispanics, and poor white community also have to fight the profit driven medical establishment (and the medical ethicists who see everything through a QALY prism, i.e. that how much should be spent on your care should be based on your quality of life and how many years you should be expected to live, i.e. as Dr Emmanuel and Dr Callahan have written: Don't waste money on grandmom's care if she is over 75.

when I was first in practice, I was in private practice and we docs wrote off a lot of free care. But as HMO's took over, it meant not being able to do this. And a lot of private stuff that we left out of the medical records now often were supposed to be recorded on the chart, where such secrets could be leaked (or snooped on by nosy relative or friends/enemies).

Medicine is now about filling in the blanks to get paid, not about chewing the fat with your patients to establish a bond of trust so when health disasters arrive, they trust you. But you know, a lot of the real issues people come to the doctor to discuss won't be mentioned unless they trust you: tThe Columbo syndrome: that you spend an hour trying to figure out what is wrong with the patient, and then, on the way out, they say: oh just one thing more...

When you work in a community, you have to be there long enough to get people to trust you. This is not easy if you work for an HMO or "doc in a box" where there is no continuity of care.

If you work in cross cultural medicine, you need to be sensitive to such things...And much of the black community is more sensitive to gaffes and prejudice Because they see it more often than others.

I should note that although I grew up in a mixed race neighborhood, that for most of my career I worked with other at risk minorities.