1/ Fascinating article in @nytimes about Racism in Medicine and the Prison System. In brief, black man, Mr. M, is denied early release on the basis of a "racist" medical formula.
Here's a short breakdown...
nytimes.com/2022/04/22/nyr…
Here's a short breakdown...
nytimes.com/2022/04/22/nyr…
2/ Judge in New Jersey considered the plea of an inmate who claimed his kidney problems made #Covid_19 especially dangerous. The man, Maurice McPhatter, was one of more than 20,000 federal prisoners who have sought early release during the pandemic...
3/ If Maurice McPhatter was born with only one kidney and now had a large kidney stone. Results from a blood test scored Mr. McPhatter’s kidney function as low. HOWEVER... historic research done in the 1999s had established race-based adjustments for kidney function in blacks...
4/ Basically, if you are black, there is a "correction factor" that boosts your kidney function score by a factor of ~1.2 and therefore can make you score normal even if your function may be reduced, thereby deprioritizing your for treatment and, in this case, for prison release
5/ These race adjustments are especially problematic since, while black Americans compose ~13% of the population that account for 35% of chronic kidney disease. Thus, the race adjustments are dereprioritizing addressing kidney disease in the highest risk population.
6/ And while the race adjustment had recently gone out of favor among in medicine, the courts have been slow to catch up and in this case, the race adjustment mean that the inmate "didn't" have kidney disease and his appeal was denied. If he were white, he may have been released.
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