So Johns Hopkins did a colonoscopy experiment that suspiciously targeted black people with unqualified health workers instead of board certified gastroenterologists. In a hospital system that has 20%-30% black admittance rates, 75% of expiremnt subjects were black.
This story has the same arguement as Henrietta Lack’s story because there are worries that patients did not have informed consent of their stepped-down care. If they did, then more black patients would’ve refused the procedure equal to their admittance rates. 75% is over representation on steroids.
Link-> -> Critics say colonoscopy study exploited Black patients - STAT
“At a time when medical researchers are under pressure to increase diversity in clinical trials, a Johns Hopkins study is sparking outrage among some physicians because of its large number of Black patients.
The controversy has stoked concerns that the institution infamous for its role in the Henrietta Lacks story may have once again exploited marginalized people for medical research. The university denies any wrongdoing and instead said it was simply providing a service to its local community, which has a mostly Black population.
The paper was published last fall without much notice but caused a stir on social media in recent weeks. It was a retrospective study analyzing the abilities of three specially trained nurse practitioners to perform colonoscopies, an invasive and potentially lifesaving cancer screening procedure normally done by gastroenterologists. Of the more than 1,000 patients who received screening colonoscopies from the nurse practitioners between 2010 and 2016, nearly 75% were Black.
“That is a huge red flag because that could not have happened randomly,” said Fola May, a gastroenterologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Did they preferentially pick Black patients to be in the study and to get the NP colonoscopies?”
African Americans make up about 63% of Baltimore’s population and 88% of the Middle East Baltimore neighborhood where Johns Hopkins Hospital is located. But Black people account for only about 25% to 31% of the patients treated in the Hopkins hospital system, according to annual reports from 2015-2016 and 2017.
Critics of the study questioned whether the patients were adequately informed that nurses don’t commonly do the procedure in the U.S., and whether they were given a choice to have their exam done by a doctor.
“When I saw the paper, my immediate concerns were around informed patient consent,” said Rachel Issaka, a gastroenterologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “I really wanted to know, were those patients told up front that their colonoscopy was being done by a nurse practitioner, because that’s not the standard of care in the United States.”
THE RESPONSE FROM OTHER HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
On Twitter, May, at UCLA, suggested the Hopkins study was exploitative. She responded to a fellow gastroenterologist’s tweet by saying the paper was “fueling the woes and fears of experimentation and exploitation in the Black community yet again!”
She was not alone in her worries, as doctors from various specialties, health professionals, and others also voiced their concerns on social media.
“Feels a lot like medical experimentation (*cough* racism) to me,” wrote Jazmyn Shaw, an emergency room nurse and medical student.
“Trying to wrap my head around how they managed to get ~750 Black people to sign up for this. I can’t even convince family to get vaccinated,” tweeted Kerry Mitchell, a plastic surgeon at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
It’s been 75 years since Mrs. Lacks and more than 100yrs since Tuskegee and cacs are still pulling this bullsht. They know damn well that nurses aren’t supposed to do these potentially life saving colonoscopies. So I find that last tweet by the surgeon damning, cause I don’t know any black people in my life that would volunteer to be guinea pigs if they were informed.
This story has the same arguement as Henrietta Lack’s story because there are worries that patients did not have informed consent of their stepped-down care. If they did, then more black patients would’ve refused the procedure equal to their admittance rates. 75% is over representation on steroids.
Link-> -> Critics say colonoscopy study exploited Black patients - STAT
“At a time when medical researchers are under pressure to increase diversity in clinical trials, a Johns Hopkins study is sparking outrage among some physicians because of its large number of Black patients.
The controversy has stoked concerns that the institution infamous for its role in the Henrietta Lacks story may have once again exploited marginalized people for medical research. The university denies any wrongdoing and instead said it was simply providing a service to its local community, which has a mostly Black population.
The paper was published last fall without much notice but caused a stir on social media in recent weeks. It was a retrospective study analyzing the abilities of three specially trained nurse practitioners to perform colonoscopies, an invasive and potentially lifesaving cancer screening procedure normally done by gastroenterologists. Of the more than 1,000 patients who received screening colonoscopies from the nurse practitioners between 2010 and 2016, nearly 75% were Black.
“That is a huge red flag because that could not have happened randomly,” said Fola May, a gastroenterologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Did they preferentially pick Black patients to be in the study and to get the NP colonoscopies?”
African Americans make up about 63% of Baltimore’s population and 88% of the Middle East Baltimore neighborhood where Johns Hopkins Hospital is located. But Black people account for only about 25% to 31% of the patients treated in the Hopkins hospital system, according to annual reports from 2015-2016 and 2017.
Critics of the study questioned whether the patients were adequately informed that nurses don’t commonly do the procedure in the U.S., and whether they were given a choice to have their exam done by a doctor.
“When I saw the paper, my immediate concerns were around informed patient consent,” said Rachel Issaka, a gastroenterologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “I really wanted to know, were those patients told up front that their colonoscopy was being done by a nurse practitioner, because that’s not the standard of care in the United States.”
THE RESPONSE FROM OTHER HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
On Twitter, May, at UCLA, suggested the Hopkins study was exploitative. She responded to a fellow gastroenterologist’s tweet by saying the paper was “fueling the woes and fears of experimentation and exploitation in the Black community yet again!”
She was not alone in her worries, as doctors from various specialties, health professionals, and others also voiced their concerns on social media.
“Feels a lot like medical experimentation (*cough* racism) to me,” wrote Jazmyn Shaw, an emergency room nurse and medical student.
“Trying to wrap my head around how they managed to get ~750 Black people to sign up for this. I can’t even convince family to get vaccinated,” tweeted Kerry Mitchell, a plastic surgeon at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
It’s been 75 years since Mrs. Lacks and more than 100yrs since Tuskegee and cacs are still pulling this bullsht. They know damn well that nurses aren’t supposed to do these potentially life saving colonoscopies. So I find that last tweet by the surgeon damning, cause I don’t know any black people in my life that would volunteer to be guinea pigs if they were informed.
