Disappointing to see how common race based medicine is in mainstream medical discourse. By looking for biological causes for racial/ethnic health inequities rather than addressing systemic social causes, we are doing our patients a disservice & perpetuating institutional racism.

Tweeting Dorothy Roberts again who explains this succinctly here

Am seeing this more than usual with COVID-19. We need to look at the social causes! Difficult to address, but essential. https://twitter.com/crageshri/status/1246355097644400645?s=21

The division of people into races dependent on their appearance & behaviours ascribed to them occurred at a time of European imperialism. This hierarchy of races gave justification for imperial policies & the systematic dehumanisation of populations.

This dehumanisation of certain races of people aided unethical medical experimentation by doctors & scientists. https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.l7075/rr-3 For more on the medical experimentation on Black Americans, ‘Medical Apartheid’ by Harriet Washington is a must read.

And of course we all heard this week how this is still happening, and is being made more prominent by COVID-19 https://twitter.com/sosowemimo/status/1246370375203774465?s=21