A powerful argument for a more equitable approach to health care.
An urgent study of how ethnic minority patients are medically disadvantaged because they are economically and socially disadvantaged—and they are dying because of it.
Liverpool, a British journalist for Nature with an expertise in immunology and virology, takes a broad view of a thorny problem: Racism plays a critical factor in health care and, as the Lancet notes, is “a public health emergency of global concern.” Systematic racism presents in many ways in the health sphere, including the persistent belief that Black people have differences enough in their pain receptors that they require less anesthesia in surgery. Biological differences do exist, notes the author, but these are at the genetic level and affect such things as the ability to metabolize certain therapeutic drugs, in the same way that people with certain genetic markers have difficulty metabolizing dairy products. Racism is often marked by simple carelessness. Algorithms for one dermatology app, for instance, were trained on light-skinned people, making their diagnostics suspect for those of darker complexion. Liverpool herself suffers from a skin condition that white doctors said was incurable until one dermatologist pronounced it common eczema that expresses itself somewhat differently on darker skin. Racially grounded disparities in health care are everywhere: Black patients wait far longer for organ transplants than whites, and standardized tests eliminate many from the candidate rolls; Black and brown people were disproportionately affected by Covid-19, and hospitals treating Black patients received fewer funds; childbirth mortality rates are higher for Black women than for white women; and so on. Liverpool notes that while these disparities are measurable, “instead of simply stating that Black people are dying disproportionately because they are poor, we should be asking why Black people…are disproportionately poor in the first place.”
A powerful argument for a more equitable approach to health care.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781662601675
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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