“Bias In Medicine” — Last Week Tonight, 2019, 22:37 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TATSAHJKRd8

Medicine is perhaps the most respected profession in our society. However, for women and people of color, quality health care is hard to find in the male-dominated industry. This is a result of implicit biases and structural problems in medicine where the male body has traditionally been the default reference. In other words, most medical studies have been done on male bodies. Researchers even view female bodies as “male bodies with pesky hormones”. This is problematic for something like heart problems which manifest differently between female and male bodies. No wonder we have the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world.

Race bias is also endemic in medicine. There is a “mortality gap” between black and white men of roughly 83,000 excess deaths each year. Medical students are often taught there are biological differences between the races in terms of skin thickness, pain tolerance, and nerve endings. This results in pain being treated differently within patients of color, and the implicit biases on the part of doctors can cause patients to fear the system. The intersection of sex and race bias is particularly deadly for women of color who are often not believed by their physicians.

How can medical practitioners reduce sex and race bias? What other biases do you think manifest in medicine? Have you ever received inadequate care where you suspected bias?