Today's craziest thing ever.

Today's lunacy comes from the World of Science, another institution hopelessly corrupted by greed, ambition, and political correctness. I encountered these examples on a research project about headaches.

Let us start with the Global Healthy Living Foundation (bold in quoted material added):

Recently, it has been suggested that the word race should not be listed among risk factors for disease. Instead, it is suggested to state the effects of racism as the reason why a disease is more common, more severe, or less well treated in people from underserved populations.

All right, so there we have it. There is no reason that one group should suffer from any disease more than another; the only difference is the effects of racism. Note that we don't know who has suggested that; it's just out there, like the breeze, like radio waves. 

Taken at face value, what does this mean? Well, for one example, how about all those studies that noticed the preponderance of breast cancer in women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, studies that pointed the way to the discovery of a mutation on the BRCA genes 1 and 2 that made many of these women more likely to suffer from this form of cancer. Did that teach us anything? No, the only reason that these women were more likely to have cancer was because of the effects of racism. 

See how easy it is to say something that sounds good and throw away a century of genuine scientific research?

The unequitable scientist,
plotting how to exclude others

But Jewish people are of the white race, not the Jewish race, I hear a voice in the balcony say. Well, that depends who's making the assessment, doesn't it? College administrators say Jews are white, I guess, and Hitler said they weren't, and in both cases it was anti-Semitic. 

Let's look at a study in Neurology, the esteemed journal of the American Academy of Neurology. What do we learn here?

Whereas races are not inherent biological categories, race is a social construct that as a vehicle for systemic racism has profound health effects. Throughout the literature, it is apparent that race plays a role in the appropriate diagnosis and treatment of headache disorders. Although recent population studies have found the prevalence of severe headache and migraine is roughly equal among White (15.5%), African American (15.0%), and Hispanic (14.9%) groups in the United States,6 differences exist in diagnosis, treatments, and outcomes.

So now we learn that there really is no such thing as race at all; it's just a social construct invented to keep people down. And yet then we have data for people of difference races, to prove that some are treated differently than others. It's easy to get the feeling that the word race is magic, that it can be dismissed when convenient and raised again when useful. When bad people see race, it's not real; when good people see race, it's crucial. Even in the same paragraph. They want to have their pain and eat from it, too.

Now let's see what the National Migraine and Headache Awareness Month people have to tell us about this topic. (That month is celebrated in June, by the way; mark your calendars.)

About one in six African Americans in the United States are diagnosed with migraine disease and one in five is diagnosed with tension-type headache. Studies on race-related gaps and possible health care inequalities in people with headache disorders are virtually non-existent. Understanding potential race-related disparities in headache patients may inform the development of culturally contextualized healthcare policies and interventions that are more likely to reduce or eradicate race-related headaches altogether (Bernadette Davantes Heckman and Ashley Joi Britton 2015).

Prior research suggests that if a patient is black, his pain is likely to be underestimated and under-treated compared to a white patient.

So now it looks like race is back on the menu, because people have race-related headaches and are treated differently by hospitals and doctors because of their race. In fact, an outfit called CtrlM Health would like us to know that

A growing body of research shows that migraine in Black people is more frequent, severe, and likely to be chronic and associated with more depression compared to white People.

Yet, among Black people with headache and migraine, inaccurate diagnoses are more common. 

BUT WAIT! Race is just a social construct, so how can you possibly say that black people have migraines more often than white people? You can only say that racism causes a difference in their care. 

Look, I personally think WAY too much is made about race. It's part of our individual human makeup and experiences, but as a Catholic, I think we're all made in God's image and we're all made by Him with love, and we should be happy about it, not fight about it. 

Medically, though, racial background and social background can provide a lot of clues about the origins of disease. Arguing about whether race is a real thing or not is almost beside the point; we would like to know if disease is caused by genes, caused by behavior, or caused by genes and triggered by environment, or the like. Thus, there are statistical uses in studying groups by similarities in DNA. And if you don't want to call it race, call it something less explosive. We're just stirring up trouble where it isn't necessary.

As for racism, sure, that's a problem in the human condition and always will be. The more tribal we act, the worse it is, and political correctness is nothing if not tribal, dividing us by income, race, sex, sexual preference, religion, experience, nation, history, you name it. 

However, there is one notable reason that I can guarantee has a lot to do with why white people get better healthcare in America despite the ferocious drive for "equity," a reason that cannot be conquered by all the goodwill in the world. Allow me to quote the uber-leftist Kaiser Family Foundation:

As of 2020, Medicaid covers about three in ten Black, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) nonelderly adults and more than two in ten of Hispanic nonelderly adults, compared to 17% of their White counterparts. 

Government healthcare sucks. And that's true whether you're red, white, blue, black, polka-dotted, or striped. The more of it you have to rely on, the worse your overall experience with healthcare is going to be. By the numbers, most Medicaid patients are white, but not by the percentage of the groups, and that's what matters to the equity hustlers.

On a related topic, about twenty years ago or so people were going bananas because researchers noted that men were usually the subject of cardiac health studies, and this made women's experience (especially symptoms of coronary distress) invisible, leading to misdiagnosis and death. They pointed out that heart disease is the #1 killer of American women, same as American men, but claimed that women who relied on the usual advice about heart attack symptoms were dying more often. So in 2004 the American Heart Association launched the Go Red for Women movement. 

Pardon my cynicism, but I also think the AHA and others were tired of the breast cancer people getting all the attention -- that is to say, money. "Hey! We're still #1! Show us some love! And money!" 

The point is, people still want to argue that women face health disparities, but when you put them on the spot they won't even tell you what a woman is. Not even Supreme Court nominees. They know the mob is waiting to pounce, and they're -- what's the word? -- chickenshit. And liars. Don't forget liars. 

Anyway, I literally have a headache now after writing all this. So, my research is complete.