Women who are poor, less-educated and/or obese receive less treatment for their breast cancer
According to a report from ABC News, women who are poor, less educated and or obese are likely to get less chemotherapy for breast cancer than richer, better educated and skinnier women. A study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that,
“women with less education were more than three times as likely as those with more education to receive reduced levels of chemotherapy.”
While some of the reasons for this are more obvious, such as patients not being able to afford the drugs, the authors of the study speculate that a significant part of the reason amounts to ignorant prejudice,
“”We speculate that physicians have concerns about a patient’s ability to tolerate the side effects of chemotherapy and that the physician’s uncertainty about a patient’s tolerance increases with increasing social distance,” said study author Dr. Jennifer Griggs, Associate Professor of Internal at the University of Michigan School of Medicine.
In other words, since physicians in these cases are not on the same social level as their patients, they may make assumptions about the patient’s ability to handle the costs and inconveniences of treatment or other factors. “One might just as well ask why we are willing to give full doses to someone with more education,” Griggs said. “It may be that negotiating side effects and continued doses of treatment is easier when there is more shared culture.”
Perhaps some of the pharmaceutical companies that are raking in gazillions of dollars on chemotherapy drugs should spend some time educating doctors on the need to treat their patients more equitably. Just a thought.
Many thanks to The New Standard News’ Brian Dominick for bringing this story to my attention.
Filed under: Uncategorized, Atrocities, Commentary
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