Women's Life Expectancy <I>Declining</i> In The U.S.
By Nicole Belle Tuesday Apr 22, 2008 8:30amWaPo:
For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women.
In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation's women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study published today.
The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women's life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.
The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.
It may also represent the leading edge of the obesity epidemic. If so, women's life expectancy could decline broadly across the United States in coming years, ending a nearly unbroken rise that dates to the mid-1800s.
"I think this is a harbinger. This is not going to be isolated to this set of counties, is my guess," said Christopher J.L. Murray, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of Washington who led the study. It is being published in PLoS Medicine, an open-access journal of the Public Library of Science.
Said Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health: "The data demonstrate a very alarming and deeply concerning increase in health disparities in the United States."
The study found a smaller decline, in far fewer places, in the life expectancy of men in this country. In all, longevity is declining for about 4 percent of males.
The phenomenon appears to be not only new but distinctly American.
Now it would be easy to take the Republican route and blame this on individual lifestyle choices rather than looking at this as a symptom of inequality of care. PBS has just recently offered a series titled "Unnatural Causes: is inequality making us sick?" showing how our position in society affects our health. Executive Producer Larry Adelman wrote about it at the AFL-CIOblog:
The single best predictor of one’s health is not diet, exercise or even smoking but class status. But it’s not only the poverty-stricken who are afflicted—after all, what would be so surprising about that?—but the middle classes as well. At each descending step down the class pyramid, from the rich to the middle to the poor, people tend to be sicker and die sooner. Top executives have, on average, better health than managers, managers fare better than supervisors and technical personnel, supervisors do better than line, service and clerical workers, and the unemployed have the worst health of all. High school dropouts die, on average, six years sooner than college graduates. In other words, it’s not CEOs who are dying of coronary heart disease but those who work for them. [..]
But many health risks have nothing to do with behaviors. Government and business decisions over which individuals have little say can expose us to health threats or health promoters: the location of toxic dumps, the quality of schools, whether plants stay open or shift jobs overseas, where parks and freeways get built, wages and benefits, shifting mortgage rates, even tax policy.
According to the MacArthur Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health and the work of Peter Schnall, June Fisher and others, high-demand coupled/low-control jobs in particular create damaging levels of chronic stress. Those who cannot control the pace of their work and have limited opportunity for autonomy and decision making experience higher rates of depression, heart disease, diabetes and premature death even when they face no physical hazards at work.
But if we look overseas, where citizen health and life expectancy are often considerably higher than ours, we can see the importance of national social policies that “treat” not just the individual but the larger environment. One set of policies—such as free universal pre-school, quality schools no matter the neighborhood, paid parental leave, four to six weeks of paid vacation—make sure health promoters are available to everyone, not just the affluent.
Login or Register to post comments.
In short, lack of affordable, quality health care for rural and poor folks is killing them. Welcome to America.
...Red States...
... I really think it's probably more due to the obesity epidemic.
According to NBC News (iirc) last night, for the first time ever, in sections of the U.S., life expectancy fell for EVERYONE, both male and female.
BTW: Is there any chance C&L will post the clip of last night's "Boston Legal" where Alan Shore (Spader) takes on the Supreme Court (with great look-alikes playing all the current justices)?
It was another great "out-of-the-park" homerun hits to come out of that show that everyone should see.
Everyones life expectancy is declining now. Men, women, kids.
If the totally toxic food and production chain doesn't kill us the Neocons will make sure a war does.
To be perfectly accurate, life expectancy overall is continuing to increase in the U.S. What this study finds, however, is that there are increasing regional disparities, and that in the heart of the confederacy, life expectancy -- particularly for women -- did indeed decline from 1983-1999. This is probably not due to lack of access to health care. Rather, it represents the delayed consequence of the increase in smoking by women during the 1950s and 60s (thanks to tobacco company marketing campaigns -- remember Virginia Slims?) and increasing rates of obesity and accompanying ills.
The real message here is increasing inequality. In most of the country, Americans are continuing to experience gains in life expectancy, although that may be reversed thanks to the obesity epidemic.
Under Republicans, we've finally begun to equalize social conditions in America with the rest of the world . . . the Third World, that is.
Mugsy @ 4:
TV is pretend. It's not reality. Just wanted to toss that in.
slippy toad @ 7:
Plus they have been getting Americans acclimated to competing with people for third world wages. With a abundant supply of illegal labor doing the jobs Americans don't want to do.
Network news doubly so.
L.A. Confidential @ 5:
Nope. On average, it's still going up. It's only going down for a specific subset of the population.
With that said, the study stinks. There are almost no covariates in any of the analyses. When interviewed on NPR, one author claimed that income was rising for the people whose life expectancy was dropping, but even that isn't in the published article. It's just an overall trend with almost nothing of real value if you care about why.
Maybe they have the covariates and simply didn't include them in the analyses. Maybe they're first trying to get some attention and will up the value/quality at some later time. From an academic's point-of-view, that would garner more pubs. But, as of now, the study is more splash than useful.
ps. Nicole - your headline is incorrect; the average life expectancy of women in the US is still rising. The decline is only in a subset of counties.
L.A. Confidential @ 8:
I believe it was George Bernard Shaw that said, "Theater is life. Film is art. Television is furniture." :)
But if you missed last night's episode, you missed Art.
Who cares? Women still outlive men, which itself is a modern phenomenon. Anyone who thinks that this is a sustainable phenomenon is mistaken. Women's life expectancy has to drop closer to that of men if they are to participate more equally in the workforce. So why not consider this too be good news?
Another interesting phenomenon is that the further a man's commute to work is, the more obese he is likely to be. Thus, exurban men are more obese than suburban men, etc. For women it's the opposite - the more likely that they are poor, close to the city, and actually have to work, the more obese they tend to be. So it seems that for women, holding down a job is itself an indicator of class status.
So move along, nothing to see here.
Fast food + exercise + tv = fatness and lower life expectancy.
When you have third world health care, you get third world results!
JTM @ 11:
Not true. Even the affluent are at risk. The difference is they can afford to be patched up and kept running by the Medical Mechanics longer.
Mugsy @ 12:
I've approached my whole life as art so I missed nothing.
Okay I better shut up I'm constantly giving away the ending and don't want to spoil the party.
E_I @ 14:
Lack of exercise perhaps?
Look Within
JTM, I think you're being inappropriately dismissive. This is indeed an ecological study -- it is based on county of residence -- and given the design, there is always the danger of the so-called "ecological fallacy." That is, although it is counties that are comparatively poor and rural which show the worst changes in life expectancy, we don't know which people within those counties are behind the trend. However, they do have the death certificate causes of death, which are highly suggestive of smoking and obesity as being drivers of the trend. They also do sort out race, and find that the trend affects both black and white people. (Hispanic identifiers on death certificates are not highly reliable, alas.) It's true this leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but it certainly demonstrates that something important is happening in these regions.
Just because a study raises questions that it doesn't answer doesn't make it worthless or mean it was badly done.
Obesity, smoking and hypertension. At least in Appalachia, the report leaves out on massive factor: Mountain Top Removal. A recent ground-breaking study from West Virginia University shows beyond doubt that people in communities near mountaintop removal coal extraction sites (hundreds of thousands of acres) have statistically quantifiable health risks that don't inure to other communities.
As one might expect, these aren't maladies that are racially or gender isolated. They are economically isolated. The people who inflict mountaintop removal on Appalachia seldom live near the places where they torment the earth. As such, they aren't heir to the problems they create. In a word, the CEOs of the coal companies don't have carcinogenic multi-billion-litre sludge seas next to their homes. Only the middle and lower class families trying to live their lives in the places where, in some cases, nine generations of their forebears have lived in peace and tranquility are subjected to the forced poisoning that mountaintop removal brings to rural Appalachia.
The WaPo story makes it easy to blame poor folks for poor choices (smoking, fatty foods), but ignores the realities of where many of these people live: home areas where the torture of the planet has a direct, deadly effect on the residents' lives.
L.A. Confidential @ 16:
I have zero increase in debating known facts. If you can't incorporate facts into your thinking, that's something you have to deal with on your own. My only suggestion is that you start by, for example, reading the paper behind the WaPo article. It's rather straight-forward, since it doesn't include many sophisticated stats concepts, such as covariates.
Stress has to be a factor too
And nicotine is the only ingested substance in the unviverse not regulated by the FDA~
cervantes @ 21:
I look at it as being appropriately skeptical, but that's splitting hairs.
I agree that they nicely provided some associated data, such as cause of death, but that's a far cry from including useful covariates. And they must have known that people would immediately start looking for causes, possibly to influence public policy, so the lack of an attempt to do the basics is a large disappointment.
In a way we were all much better off before the Mega Mass Media Conglomerates Brainwashing began.
Your Sick!
Take a pill!
Do this!
Do that!
Be a Celebrity!
Get a new outfit!
Get an Ipod!
We're winning!
Old is Young!
Unlimited Calls!
Buy Stuff!
Get Insurance!
Join the Army!
Get a life!
So and so said!
The economy is good!
Healthy Cheese Burger!
JTM @ 23:
It's nothing new. That debate has been going on since the 60's. And nothings changed in fact we are worse off in many ways with every gain having been reversed by Bush Co this past 7 years.
Besides people don't like to be told what to do. They are going to smoke and eat junk if they want.
"Old people are not our demographic anyway"
--- Global Mega-Corp Incorporated
cervantes @ 6:
Yeah, the title of the thread is a bit misleading: life expectancy is still increasing in the US, but it's declining for poorer populations. What it does show is that our disregard for the basic needs of the lower class in the past 10-20 years has taken its toll to the point that it is measurable.
The irony- Spain just passed Japan as the nation with the longest life expectancy for women.
pissed off patricia @ 24:
Exactly what I was thinking... the stressors in peoples' lives these days it appalling. And the effers "running" the country (into the ground) have no idea what it's like to be one of the working masses... time for a change.
slippy toad @ 7:
I'd really like to thank Bush for ... keels over.
Um, I don't see what the big deal is. If the story is correct that much of this stems from smoking and obesity, what's the problem? People are free to live as they please, and if smoking makes them happy, so be it: it's their choice, they know the consequences, respect them and get off their case. Same thing with the "obesity epidemic."
Maybe, just MAYBE you could twist this into an "it's the government's fault for not providing healthcare to people in the poorer pockets of society" argument, but at the same time, don't you think it's a little quick to assume that it's anything more than lifestyle-related? People have been bitching about the dangers of being overweight for years now; they should be pleased with themselves that they were right about the outcome and leave it at that.
Bob Kincaid @ 22:
Thank You! BRAVO!!! You are SO RIGHT!!!
I am an outspoken proponent in my Virginia community and at large of people taking more personal responsibility for their health and wellness. A healthy lifestyle IS the silver bullet we need to combat the ill effects of our current culture. Metabolic syndrome (obesity and high blood pressure and also closely associated with diabetes) and smoking are the 2 biggest public health issues facing us today that we wield great personal power over.
The negative effects of the environment are most often the direct result of greedy corporations. The people of Southwestern Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky know only too well the greed and indifference of the coal industry to their well-being. Poor people live where they can, in the cheaper places near factories, waste facilities and mines and they pay the price with their health. Everyone pays no matter their economic status when they live near coal-burning plants. Asthma rates are skyrocketing. Schools have to keep kids inside for P.E. because of air quality dangers. WTF?
Health disparities are nothing new to public health. Certain populations have long been identified to be at higher mortality risk for some conditions. That this would even decrease life spans for some geographical areas seems a given. Now, health disparity solutions, that would be news.
The STATUS SYNDROME explains this evolution in healthcare. Marmot found that STATUS has more to do with life expectancy than smoking, obesity and drinking COMBINED....
"If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Insurance companies are contributing to this statistic. They deny necessary treatments and medications on a regular basis. Despite asking for care, patients just don't get it. The doctor orders it, no one will pay for it, patients cannot afford it and hence the life expectancy just went down dramatically.
Never you mind that all American males can visit the provider of their choice to have their ERECTION DYSFUNCTION addressed. We all hear that story time after time courtesy of the mainstream media. That message interupts many American households at the dinner table.
But women.... they are only necessary early in life, when at their physical best, never mind their mind, use the body to recreate and procreate.... hopefully more money hungry men.
Nope I am not a feminist... but I hear myself sounding like one. And yes I am female and in dire need of healthcare. I am on SS Disability but between my Part D company denying every medication due to high costs and because Medicare allows doctors to opt out of that plan.... I get essentially no treatment or meds for my chronic lifelong illness misdiagnosed for thirty years as Lupus.
Never you mind one iota.... because very male can go get his erection medication today!!
And should I mention plastic surgery.... nah.
Ever watch a woman try to kick cigarettes? Ever watch a woman who doesn't want to quit
because knows it's hopeless? Ever see one who hasn't had one in hours looking back and
forth trying to locate a store or another smoker to bum a cigarette from? Cigarettes are
used to cover a whole host of problems in both men and women including gambling addictions
depression, and the bipolar spectrum.
longnow @ 39:
Ever stop and think that Psychology is a pseudoscience that evolved from phrenology (the practice of reading lumps on people's head's to determine personality). It ranks right up their with astrology and channeling spirits, yet they can perscribe medicines or label people with supposed disorders.
Healthy food is expensive. Unhealthy food is cheap. Americans are often getting lots of calories, but very little actual nutrition.
It used to be that most of the working class did very physical jobs which at least provided them with some exercise; now most jobs involve sitting on your ass, although you're still stressed out. Inactivity + stress is a bad combination for health.
The poorer people are, the more stressed out they are. Stress is now linked as a major causative factor to at least 60% of chronic diseases in the U.S.
Education, including education about healthy lifestyles, is expensive. Republicans have gutted elementary and secondary education and the cost of higher education has tripled in comparison to average income for this generation of young people.
Preventative screening tests and physicals are only for the rich nowadays. The pap smear saved so many lives--now I know women who are dying of cervical cancer because they have not been able to afford to get a pelvic exam for the last 10+ years.
Thanks, conservatives. You are turning the U.S. into a third world country.
chuck @ 40:
If I'm not mistook...psychologists study groups of people, and cannot prescribe meds...you may be thinking of psychiatry.
L.A. Confidential @ 8:
For anyone who missed it, the clip has been posted on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GG7sj2APpc
Marie @ 36:
Uh, they're not independent variables. It's not like it's 10% smoking, 25% status. Smoking is determined by status as well. Smoking is also determined by education, and education by status. Smoking is also determined by peer pressure, and peer pressure by status.
But you could also make the argument that there are cultural influences apart from social status. Status is only a predictor of the cultural norms that an individual will fall into, while the cultural norms themselves are what creates the negative behaviors that are adverse to health. Let's call this culture redneck pride. The smoking goes right along with bowling, tobacco chewing, hunting, and pickup-truck driving. It also feeds into racism, religion, and a tendency to support conservative politics. All of these things are cultural phenomenon, not social-class phenomenon. There are other communities of poor people who don't smoke, don't vote Republican, and don't think that their shotguns are what protects their Freedom.
chuck @ 40:
You've obviously never had a loved one suffer from one of these "disorders." It's not healthy, it's not normal, and many many people are desperate for help.
If, on the other hand, you are referring to the practice of psychiatry as it was depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or A Clockwork Orange then you're living in the past; times have changed drastically and doctors don't use psychiatry as a form of social or mind control anymore. Well, except maybe the government doctors in Gitmo...
liz @ 38:
Just think about all those males out there that work 40 plus hours a week and don't have health insurance; becuase, their greedy employers don't give a sh!t whether they live or die. Now here you are on disablity, which at least provides some kind of healthcare, complaining about a bunch of men, that contribute to society, yet have nothing; where as, you contribute nothing, yet have something.
emphasa @ 45:
My mother suffers from severe bi-polar/paranoid schizophrenia...dealt with that my whole life...she HAS to take meds to keep her from totally flipping out. psychiatry, while it does have it's problems...is FAR from pseudoscience...and this country has a terrible track record that continues to this day, of caring for the mentally ill...they'd rather incarcerate them, than treat them.
These are the same people who vote against their own interests.
They defeated McCain in 2000 because McCain was the "Manchurian Candidate"
with an illegitimate black child. Now McCain is using the same people to label
Obama a "hidden Marxist mole" set to go off as soon as he reaches Casa Blanca.
They are located in the heart of the confederacy and just mention !!ABORTION!!
!!HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA!! and the LESBONES and off they go to the races.
emphasa @ 45:
I don't blame him. When was it that the APA finally stopped classifying homoseaxuality as a mental disorder? I don't think he's living in the past. Psychology and psychiatry still remain practices where disease is defined as any departure from societal norms and the cure is to dope the patient up with psychotropic drugs which do more to incapacitate the individual than to solve the problem, if there even was a problem. A.D.D. is one such disease where the problem lies more in society at large - from pollution to nutrition to the educational system - than it does with the individual who is forced to take drugs. Unfortunately, A.D.D. is a problem that affects more boys than girls, yet we blame the boys themselves instead of fixing our society to better accommodate the development needs of boys.
Women’s Life Expectancy Declining In The U.S.
http://www.bizbag.com/Old%20ads/virginia%20slims%20.JPG
You've come a long way baby.
emphasa @ 45:
Damn blocks
Well they've brought back Electro-shock therapy, but call it ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy).
There having documentaries about poor communities having to move away or die when corporations move in with dangerous toxins.
ysbaddaden @ 53:
I believe that's called environmental genocide.
"The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women’s life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983. ---------This is intriguing. I DID watch the PBS program"Unnatural Causes".too. First rate. It got me to thinking about something I read just a short while ago,(Can't remember where!),about the proliferation of WalMarts in the South ,and the corollary of high incidence of poor health ,specifcally in the southern states.Of especial interest,to me, is to note the timeframe of the study-from '83 onwards. If I'm not mistaken,this inaugurated the hey day of the WalMart Superstore phenomena-with many, many stores being built in clusters-barely a mile apaprt in some areas...especially in rurtal South. The ready availabilty of high fructose,cheap foodstuffs,and MSM sodium injected meat and poultry,no doubt has contributed to ,and aggravated many existing predispositions to health risks----- empty calories, at a cheap price, creates a coundrum. (MSM is a salt,injected to allegedly enhance flavor-what is lesser known is that it is addictive,besides elevating hypertension.) I am not blaming WalMart-I'm merely offering an observation.
Wimmin have gone from expecting to expectancy.
"The phenomenon appears to be not only new but distinctly American."---------------Coincidentally,so is WalMart.
Killing off the wimins will help reduce the excess population. War will do the rest.
emphasa @ 45:
Psychiatry and Psychology are not pseudosciences but they are far from hard sciences. Psychiatry has finally
awakened to the fact that they are being bought and sold by Big Pharma. They woke up because they were forced to by their
patients, their fellow professionals, and because the problem was so obvious it was becoming an embarrassment and
unmanageable by the PR people. There are good psychiatrists who don't drink the koolaid but are forced to give out
the free samples and prescriptions because it is all they have to work with. What do you do with people who are out
of control? Anti psych meds are a necessary evil because telling them to 'go out and exercise and take vitamins' is a
joke and that is a fact. That said, Psychiatrists probably lead all health professionals in suicides, drug abuse, and mental health
problems because of the fact that their patients are continuously complaining about side effects and complaining that their
Psychiatrists are, in effect, trying to kill them...which means the patient is paranoid which means they are need a bigger
dose of meds to deal with this obviously paranoid thinking which does finally...shut them up. Except if the patient
is "non-compliant" and deems it necessary to see a C.C.N. (p-docs call them quacks) for real treatment.
So the moral of this story is that you can add Psychiatrists to that list of endangered populations whose lifespans are probably in
decline and that income, in this case, is not a determinant.
Nobody needs to live forever. Don't smoke.
Renell @ 55:
Thats funny because in the deep south back in the 1930's and 40's national franchises were thought to be a sign of the devil and
that the end times were neigh. They were right except that it just gets drawn out a little bit...a kind of slow rapture.
Poor women with heart disease are more likely to receive poor medical care for the condition than men are. Because most of the studies, which are expensive, done on heart disease involve using men as test subjects. But women have different symptoms for heart disease than men. Meanwhile, many doctors, and I've met quite a few, don't take women patients seriously. Add to that limited access to healthcare, or only access to the emergency room, and the combination can be lethal.
There've been studies done about how blacks and whites are treated by the medical community as well. There are disparities in care. A white male complaining of heart trouble is more likely to be listened to and treated properly. A black male complaining of the same symptoms is more likely to receive no treatment. For black women, I'd bet it's even worse.
Leslie [Bitter Elitist Hussein] @ 63:
That's quite depressing. I'd suggest making med school a hell of a lot cheaper, so more good people will become doctors and not just the rich ones, but who knows what's really at the root of this problem (though I do suspect that if more people had med school as an option it would certainly help!). This is a much better time in terms of social advancement, but we still have a long way to go before all people are seen as equals.
Look on the bright side: As long as the life expectancy of men stays the same or increases, it means they're promoting equality between the sexes.
Leslie [Bitter Elitist Hussein] @ 63:
Damn....that's fucked up...what a sick country we live in.
longnow @ 62:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHPikUPlRD8
chuck @ 41:
As a side note, it would be fabulous if everyone (both well- and ill-intentioned) would stop conflating psychology and psychiatry as being equivalent. They are not.
Psychiatry is a branch of medicine, not a branch of science. Psychiatrists are M.D. physicians who went to medical school, and are not routinely trained to be scientists. They're trained to think like doctors, to treat all illnesses (physical and mental alike) as products of a diseased body and in need of medical intervention, i.e., typically drugs.
Psychology is the scientific study of behavior, not a branch of medicine. Those clinically-trained psychologists who do practice therapy cannot prescribe medication (except in a very few number of states, where it is legal and they have to receive special training to do so) and typically do not approach disorders from a medical model, but from a cognitive-behavioral one (although there are certainly others too with varying levels of scientific legitimacy).
Psychiatry is more of an art than a science, and probably deserves much of its bad reputation. Psychology (which includes much, much more than the study of mental disorders) is a full-fledged science.
Leslie [Bitter Elitist Hussein] @ 63:
And women receive better care for breast cancer than men do even though men suffer from breast cancer, too. So? Each sex gets research done for them and treatments made available based on the stuff that actually makes them sick the most. If you read the results of this study, heart disease did *not* contribute to the lowered live expectancy of these women. So I really don't know why you would bring up heart disease.
Women already receive an incredible amount of preferential treatment in medicine. In my city, there is a dedicated women's hospital which has its own research facilities dedicated to women's health issues. No such hospital or research facility exists for men. In many cases, women are the primary recipients of research just because they live long enough to suffer from certain diseases, such as osteoporosis. The whole field of geriatrics primarily benefits women. Social security, pension funds, everything that you get more benefit by living longer is disproportionately going to women because of their longevity. Did you ever think that maybe one of the reasons that women outlive men is because they receive better medical care?
bbk @ 69:
Sure, that thought might cross someone's mind, but, as with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, anyone who applies critical thinking and intellectual honesty to the issue would quickly realize that it doesn't hold water.
Women don't outlive men because women are treated better; they outlive men partly because men treat themselves worse than women treat themselves, on a wide range of health-impacting behaviors.
Research also suggests (not unequivocally, but still) that being male is just harder on the body in the long-run. Higher amounts of testosterone have been linked to a whole range of disease vulnerabilities, even when accounting for behavior and lifestyle.
Not that I want even indirectly to bolster your claim that we're spending an unwarranted amount of time and energy studying women's health issues. You might want to stop and consider that in the history of medicine and science, almost everything until recently that we'd like to think we've learned about "people" in general has come from studies done with middle- and upper-class white men.
I would say we're still massively in catch-up mode in that regard. What you see as preferential treatment is science trying to correct a very long-standing inequity in the other direction.
Obly @ 71:
What you just said is despicable.
By this logic, we should let all women who get breast cancer