At issue is a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning, making them look healthier than they really were — all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently. That race-based equation could delay diagnosis of organ failure and evaluation for a transplant, exacerbating other disparities that already make Black patients more at risk of needing a new kidney but less likely to get one.
A few years ago, the National Kidney Foundation and American Society of Nephrology prodded laboratories to switch to race-free equations in calculating kidney function. Then the U.S. organ transplant network ordered hospitals to use only race-neutral test results in adding new patients to the kidney waiting list.
Dr. Martha Pavlakis (of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and former chair of the network’s kidney committee) calls what happened next an attempt at restorative justice: The transplant network gave hospitals a year to uncover which Black kidney candidates could have qualified for a new kidney sooner if not for the race-based test — and adjust their waiting time to make up for it. That lookback continues for each newly listed Black patient to see if they, too, should have been referred sooner.
Continue to try to be a better person than you were on reddit.
I admitted I’m not a doctor and commented on the rhetoric. You came in acting like master of all racial doctoring, and with the same confrontational virtue signaling aggression I pointed out.
I highly doubt that any doctor is trying to kill black patients because they are racist.
Instead of “we detected a bad test and are trying to fix it, yay!” It’s “yall racist fucks be killing us because you’re racist. Why did you bring race into my Healthcare anyway?”
Answer to that question “because you just said ‘you racist fucks won’t consider my race and you treat us like white people, and that is killing us’.”
It’s never a productive conversation.
It’s always “yall racist. I’m a victim of your racism. I’m a victim of you. Stand up, no, sit down, why yall standing? Look at you standing, so racist. If you werent racist youd sit down. Look at the racist just sittin’ there. Stop victimizing me. Get on your belly. Why your racist ass on your belly? Oppressing me with your lying on your belly ass.”