Jack & Jill Politics

You know the drill:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. blacks continue to get inferior cancer treatment compared to whites, researchers said on Monday in a study showing that disparities first documented in the early 1990s persist despite efforts to erase them.

The researchers assessed the type of treatment given to more than 143,000 Americans over age 65 for lung, breast, colon, rectal and prostate cancer from 1992 to 2002 under the Medicare government health insurance program.

Black patients were consistently less likely than whites to receive the recommended types of treatment, the study found, and the problem was just as bad in 2002 as in 1992.

The article goes on to note that the problems may be more due to social inequalities than the individual racism of providers. Well, yeah. But since most people think those social inequalities don’t exist or are our fault to begin with, that’s not so comforting.

In the case of breast cancer, black women often contract a different, drug resistant version that hasn’t been the focus of medical research precisely because it affects us, so it’s less of an urgent priority.