Suspicion of the medial profession has a basis in hitory

Actual bias continues toady

Consider this abridged list of horrors: In the Old South, enslaved persons were seen as suitable human specimens for medical experiment and demonstration. In 1839, abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld said “'Public opinion’ would tolerate surgical experiments, operations, processes, performed upon [slaves] which it would execrate if performed upon their master or other whites.” Indeed, White doctors would buy slaves to experiment upon, and, no, the medical brutality did not end with slavery. The 40-year Tuskegee experiments, in which Black men with syphilis were purposefully left untreated by the U.S. government, continued until 1972. According to one 2017 study, that crime left such a deep psychic scar that the distrust it created reduced life expectancy among Black men in America by more than a year.

This all cuts even deeper in families of African immigrants like mine. We joked darkly that Western companies would try to experiment with covid-19 vaccines on Africans, and sure enough two French doctors suggested that a coronavirus intervention be tested in Africa first. The World Health Organization was forced to step in: Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “appalled” at the “racist remarks” and that “Africa can not and will not be a testing ground for any vaccine.” Ghebreyesus added, the “hangover from the colonial mentality has to stop,” but the history goes beyond colonialism. Just this past decade, Pfizer had to create a $35 million fund in a settlement with Nigeria after experimental drug trials left 11 children dead.

Given such a history, mistrust is not irrational, and the only way to overcome it will be to treat it with respect. Ultimately, the answer is to end the medical racism that affects so many Black people around the world — the belief that Black bodies don’t feel pain, the inability of doctors to recognize life-threatening symptoms on darker skin and the inequitable care given to Black patients across the board.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/24/health-care-system-has-failed-black-americans-no-wonder-many-are-hesitant-about-vaccine/

Questions arise about the AstroZeneca vaccine

The announcement this week that a cheap, easy-to-make coronavirus vaccine appeared to be up to 90 percent effective was greeted with jubilation. “Get yourself a vaccaccino,” a British tabloid celebrated, noting that the vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, costs less than a cup of coffee.

But since unveiling the preliminary results, AstraZeneca has acknowledged a key mistake in the vaccine dosage received by some study participants, adding to questions about whether the vaccine’s apparently spectacular efficacy will hold up under additional testing.

Scientists and industry experts said the error and a series of other irregularities and omissions in the way AstraZeneca initially disclosed the data have eroded their confidence in the reliability of the results.

Officials in the United States have noted that the results were not clear. The head of the flagship federal vaccine initiative suggested that the vaccine’s most promising results may not have reflected data from older people.

The upshot, the experts said, is that the odds of regulators in the United States and elsewhere quickly authorizing the emergency use of the AstraZeneca vaccine are declining, an unexpected setback in the global campaign to corral the devastating pandemic.

“I think that they have really damaged confidence in their whole development program,” said Geoffrey Porges, an analyst for the investment bank SVB Leerink.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/business/coronavirus-vaccine-astrazeneca-oxford.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Excellent article on whether ethnic minorities should have priority in receiving the COVID vaccine

By now, we all know that Covid-19 is not an equal-opportunity killer. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people are getting the disease more often and suffering more severe outcomes than white Americans. 

The most glaring statistic: 1 in 1,000 Black Americans have already died in this pandemic. In the US, Black residents have been dying at twice the rate of white residents.

There’s nothing about being Black, in and of itself, that makes people more biologically susceptible to Covid-19. Instead, the disproportionate impact is due to an accumulation of factors from centuries of systemic racism. Discriminatory housing policies like redlining have made it harder to maintain social distance. Unequal education and job opportunities have compelled people to take on higher-risk work. Worse health care access has bred more underlying medical conditions.

A society that has foisted all these conditions on minority groups, which now make them more vulnerable to Covid-19, has to ask itself: When a vaccine is discovered, should people of color get priority access?

There’s definitely a strong ethical and epidemiological argument for it. We’ve got a moral duty to redress injustice, plus a public health duty to prevent as much death as possible — and since people of color are dying at higher rates, maybe they should be at the front of the line for the vaccine. 

Melinda Gates is among those making this argument. When Time magazine asked her who, aside from health care workers, should get first dibs on a vaccine, she said, “In the US, that would be Black people next, quite honestly, and many other people of color.”

But others have raised concerns. What if many non-Black people resent Black people for getting prioritized, heaping more stigma and racism on them? What if many Black people don’t feel comfortable being among the first in line for a new vaccine, given the horrific history of medical experimentation on African Americans? Some people of color expressed this worry in response to Gates, saying, “In other words, we’re the guinea pigs,” and, “We are not crash test dummies, we’ll go after you.” 

Experts at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) proposed a workaround on October 2 in a report, which they wrote at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health. Instead of using race as the criterion, a vaccination program could use location — perhaps at the zip code level or census tract level — when deciding where to concentrate vaccine allocation. That would allow the US to target low-income communities with fewer health care options and more underlying medical conditions.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/10/2/21493933/covid-19-vaccine-black-latino-priority-access