This is interesting. Even when Latina women have the same access to health resources they still seem to have a higher risk of breast cancer.
University of Denver researcher A. Tyler Watlington, M.D., M.S.P.H., and colleagues looked at data on 139 Hispanic women and 2,118 non-Hispanic white women enrolled in a Kaiser Permanente health plan for at least three years.Earlier research has suggested that Hispanic women get more aggressive breast cancer. But most experts thought that in the United States, Hispanic women's lesser access to health care explained this disparity. Women who do not get appropriate breast cancer screening tend to have later-stage disease by the time they find out they have cancer.
But Watlington and colleagues found that the differences between Hispanic women and other women persist even when they get exactly the same health care.
The conclusion seems to be that different ethnicities have some biologically determined reasoning for this. I am naturally apprehensive of these conclusions. Regardless of access to health care, studies have shown that women of color are less likely to go to the doctor if they have a problem, or go in later stages of health ailments. Also what about diet, nature of work, social environment?
I am always wary of science that tries to biologically determine racial/ethnic differences.
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Did you mean "weary" or "wary" in that last sentence?
Wary.
isn´t it that Japanese women are the least to get breast cancer because of all the fish they eat? (I might be wrong but there was a disease they hardly get)...
Byt he way I´ve heard that jewish women don´t get "vaginal"cancer(sorry don´t know the correct word) because the males are circumcised. Are then lesbians also more free of it??
Sylvia,
Cervical cancer is caused by a virus carried into the vagina by a penis, or, i suppose, anything else that might possibly be infected, so if a woman isn't having sex, she is at a reduced risk. I don't know if male circumcision has a great impact on this, but i imagine lesbian sex may present less of a risk of infection.
Of course, we now have a vaccine for the virus that causes cervical cancer, but access to it is being waylaid by the religious right (i'm sure you can find plenty of info on the feministing site if you search for cervical cancer vaccine).
:)
many, many reasons to be wary.
-same access for 3 years. before that?
-race & class based residential segregation exposes many people of color to a greater number of environmental hazards. rich people won't live near toxic waste, after all.
-controlled for differences in income? if not, disregard completely (diet, environmental exposure, and so on).
-the sample is very small. too small to responsibly make any sort of claim of the kind being made (or "suggested").
-many consider, for good reasons, comparing a sample of 139 to a sample of 2,000+ is methodologically unsound.
and so on and so on. usually scientists who find "race-based biological differences" in certain outcomes are people looking for them.
European, North American and Ashkenazi Jewish women are at greatest risk for ovarian cancer. Age and environment are factors but genetics play the biggest part.
As is the case with most cancers, ovarian cancer risk increases with age. The highest rates of ovarian cancer occur in women over age 60. The second most important risk factor is having European or North American ancestry.
It's important to keep in mind that the statistics above apply to the general population. There are a number of risk factors — both environmental and genetic — that determine each woman's individual risk for ovarian cancer.
For example, women of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are thought to be at an increased risk for ovarian cancer, as a result of their genetic heritage. Up to 40 percent of ovarian cancers in Ashkenazi Jewish women are thought to be inherited.
It's clear that there is biological diversity in the human race. Give me a number of skulls, and I could, with a fair degree of accuracy -- and my background is in cultural, rather than physical anthropology -- tell you the race of the person it came from. Give me the medical history of a person, and, for certain genetic diseases (Tay-Sachs for Ashkenazic Jews, sickle-cell trait for Africans, Segawa's disease for Scandinavians), I could tell you where their ancestors were from.
Give me the results of an IQ test, though, and I could tell you nothing about the person, other than what the test says their IQ is.
Intelligence is the single-most adaptive trait possessed by humans. Everybody needs it. We are weak, unsteady bipedal apes with big heads and no claws and short little muzzles. Our young are delicious little hyena-snacks. We all needed to be smart to live. And so we are.
There are differences between people with differing genetic heritages. Sometimes, those differences are striking: people of Inuit heritage don't undergo vasoconstriction in the cold, and are much less susceptible to frostbite; central Africans have a much higher proportion of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscles.
There's nothing inherently oppressive about acknowledging that there are
It's clear that there is biological diversity in the human race. Give me a number of skulls, and I could, with a fair degree of accuracy -- and my background is in cultural, rather than physical anthropology -- tell you the race of the person it came from. Give me the medical history of a person, and, for certain genetic diseases (Tay-Sachs for Ashkenazic Jews, sickle-cell trait for Africans, Segawa's disease for Scandinavians), I could tell you where their ancestors were from.
Give me the results of an IQ test, though, and I could tell you nothing about the person, other than what the test says their IQ is.
Intelligence is the single-most adaptive trait possessed by humans. Everybody needs it. We are weak, unsteady bipedal apes with big heads and no claws and short little muzzles. Our young are delicious little hyena-snacks. We all needed to be smart to live. And so we are.
There are differences between people with differing genetic heritages. Sometimes, those differences are striking: people of Inuit heritage don't undergo vasoconstriction in the cold, and are much less susceptible to frostbite; central Africans have a much higher proportion of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscles.
There's nothing inherently oppressive about acknowledging that our genes create some biological differences. But, outside of a few extra gold medals, a genetic disease (which breast cancer is, to a certain extent), or a neat party trick, our genetic differences are pretty close to irrelevant: in all the ways that are important, whatever our background, we're not all that different.
-- ACS
Judy, I have a question about the cervical cancer vaccine. Wasn't there fairly recent news that it could be harmful?
"Give me a number of skulls, and I could, with a fair degree of accuracy -- and my background is in cultural, rather than physical anthropology -- tell you the race of the person it came from."
say that to a competent biologist or M.D., and most will laugh. the only thing you can tell from a skull is height.
"Give me the medical history of a person, and, for certain genetic diseases (Tay-Sachs for Ashkenazic Jews, sickle-cell trait for Africans, Segawa's disease for Scandinavians), I could tell you where their ancestors were from."
wrong again. let's do the example most white people like pitching: sickle cell:
http://www.understandingrace.org/humvar/sickle_01.html
"There's nothing inherently oppressive about acknowledging that our genes create some biological differences."
unless, of course, you're wrong.
you can also tell sex from a skull, but that's it. sex and height.
Dermatology's the only branch of medicine where I'd expect to see racial differences. Apparently laser hair removal depends on hair absorbing light and skin reflecting it. OTOH, I also heard that the Australian skin cancer epidemic includes Aborigine patients (not all of whom have a whole bunch of white ancestors too).
BTW, dermatolog*ists* seem to have some strange attitudes about racial difference. On the 1-6 skin lightness scale I saw, "olive" (why do they call it that? I'm not green) is 4th darkest which makes about as much sense as having a 6-color rainbow go blush, rose, magenta, crimson, yellow, blue. o_O
Some diseases are genetically-linked; why wouldn't they be? Resistance to disease is the most direct result of evolution. There's no shame in acknowledging the fact, and as a matter of fact I think it's very important that more attention be paid to the issue.
For example, lactose intolerance is prevalent in every population besides the Northern European races and the Maasai. The ability to digest lactose past childhood was a genetic anomaly that developed in these particular societies.
That's odd.
Mi madre had spent some time working in a minority breast cancer screening program, some years in the past.
She may have some thoughts or recollections that have relevance - she may not.
But, I ask.
"Byt he way I´ve heard that jewish women don´t get "vaginal"cancer(sorry don´t know the correct word) because the males are circumcised. Are then lesbians also more free of it??"
most American men are circumcised, so that wouldn't effect cervical cancer rates for any particular ethnic group in the US, although cervical cancer is caused by a virus thats spread through sex and most people have. circumcision wouldn't effect whether or not a man carried the virus either...there's a belief some people have that uncircumcised penises are somehow unclean and that's what that sounds like. uncirumcised men aren't more likely to carry a virus. yeah, that's not exactly a feminist issue but it's good to be informed.
However, where someone's ancestors came from, and the population they identify themselves as belonging to can serve as a valuable shortcut -- including the counterexample you gave. If your ancestors weren't from an area with malaria, you probably don't have sickle-cell trait.
Currently, doctors can't sequence someone's entire genome to find out what potential risk factors they might have. Until then, they're going to have to use ancestry as diagnostic shorthand for potential genetic diseases.
-- ACS
(1) If you're interested in how that's done, google "cranial discrete traits."
Actually, Katxyz, there's been some research that indicates that circumsised men are less likely to pass viruses on to their partners. There was a study in Africa with the HIV virus and it was found that circumsised men had a lesser chance of passing the virus, and it's been suggested as another way to help slow the spread of the disease. If this is true for HIV, I don't see why it wouldn't be true for HPV or any other sexually trasmitted infection.
That's not to say that uncircumsised men are "dirtier" but that anatomical realities lead to a higher virus load surviving on their sexual organs.
As far as the breast cancer rates, I'm dubious of the study too. Not because I don't think it's possible that certain diseases don't have genetic connections, but because I'd like to see more long term research done.
This research has been obscured by the reporting, as looking at the abstract shows:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/114206388/ABSTRACT
It didn't look at genetics or socioeconomics, and so when they say "biologic factors" have more of an effect than current health care, they mean not just genetic ones but those which erizzle enumerated as well: the accumulated biological effects of environment (although that does seem like a less honest way to state it than "socioeconomic/environmental factors," wonder what that's about). They focused only on insurance and whether it would even out the numbers for Latinas and non-Latinas. It didn't. Good to know, for all of us, because it means that more attention must be paid to factors other than later-life access to health care to really reduce rates.
(I'm picky on this point because the same obfuscation for people's particular agendas is being done to my research right now. I will not recognize it by the time it hits the media.)
There ARE substantial genetic differences between populations of people from different parts of the world (google HapMap and read about a project every bit as important as the human genome project, but with far less glamour). These don't perfectly correspond to our casual race categorizations because our race categorizations are inane. They're based in the one-drop rule (Djimon Honsou, Halle Berry and Colin Powell, all "black"?) or are Eurocentric ("Hispanic" covers any possible combination of Native American/Asian, African, or European, and as a race/genetic category has laughably little meaning--unlike the categories of African, European and Asian, which show robust genetic differences.) All the more reason to look at people's ACTUAL variation, not just the variations we assume them to have based on our idiosyncratic identification of their origins, when trying to see if their background will be affecting their proclivity to disease.
Mina, why would you only expect selection to work on skin color? Temperature gradients are at least as important as light gradients as humans moved to different latitudes, shouldn't you also expect those sorts of adaptations, at least? And what about genetic drift and founder effects?
A side note about sample sizes: for case/control analyses, it substantially increases power to have a control group that's orders of magnitude larger than the case group. So in this study it doesn't automatically indicate poor methodology and may even indicate the opposite.
I heard that African-Americans retain more minerals in their bodies than whites. Apparently, it's an adaptive trait for living in the desert (so you don't lose those minerals in sweat?) that those with lighter skin do not need.
Apparently, this can have all sorts of bad effects, such as the accumulation of lead in the system.
I wouldn't be surprised if some similar mechanism were partly to blame here.
I'm also wary of gender/race studies. We're all too familiar with being told that females can't perform certain tasks because of their "proven" weakness or that women aren't smart enough to break it into science and math fields (which doesn't explain why R&D is pretty much dominated by female lab techs).
After reading through the comments, and I may definitely have missed this, but I was a little dissapointed that no one thought to note that perhaps latina women do not have the same access to knowledge about women's health. I happen to be a Kaiser member and, while at my local facility recently, I watched a group of Latina women struggle to communicate with the glasses specialist in optometry. Simply having access to the same healthcare facility so certainly not the same as having equal access to the same healthcare information.
Furthermore, the conversation going on above about the "acceptance" of biological diversity being the same as racial diversity does seem dangerous. Racial diversity is something we made up and biological diversity, from my understanding, is a result of human adapting to our surroundings. The Hutus and Tutsis were not biologically divers, but someone decided to separate/segregate the two groups by deeming them "racially" diverse.
Oh and one last thing. To Mina, on the subject of Australian indigenous peoples who are equally at risk for skin cancer: actually many of those people do have European ancestry. Check out information on Sorry Day and the reasons for it. There were a lot of rapes when Europeans (mostly men) started settling Aboriginal land. Many of the aboriginal people you meet in Australia today, you wouldn't think of as the "traditional" post card picture of an indigenous person....Which brings me back to my earlier conclusion. People can be biologically diverse(b/c their ancestors had to adapt to different things). Race is sometimes how we name biological diversity, but often how a group in power chooses to separate groups for their own convenience.
techne, this is really off the subject a bit, but...
I live in Oklahoma, and I have to tell you that I don't know any Native Americans (you probably know there's a fairly large population here) who wouldn't laugh themselves silly if you called them Hispanic. As would pretty much anyone else in hearing.
My first instinct was to doubt that the differences were genetic; I would assume that estrogenic environmental pollution and diet (especially one high in animal products) would lead to a higher exposure to environmental estrogen levels, and therefore a higher risk of estrogen-dependent breast cancer.
But the Hispanic women are more likely to have non-estrogen dependent cancers, which makes the case for either a genetic cause, or another a much less-well-understood environmental mechanism. This is why education and health care (based on prevention of the estrogen-positive type of cancer) are not likely to be factors in this situation.
If we spent money on preventing cancer, instead of just treating it, we'd be better prepared to distinguish between genetic and environmental effects. Unfortunately, the drug companies can't make money off most preventative measures.
Just one more problem of a capitalism-based society...
Kimmy, I was speaking about the other direction: mestizos, Hispanics with Amerindian heritage. That's not the same as saying that Amerindians are Hispanic. Since the label applies to anyone with any European Spanish ancestry (from 100% on down), that wouldn't make much sense.
Equal access to health care does not matter when
women of color are less likely to go to the doctor if they have a problem, or go in later stages of health ailments. Also what about diet, nature of work, social environment?
Agreed and whenever I hear about higher rates of breast cancer or prostate cancer for blacks, etc., I figure it has to do with environment, diet, stress, environmental pollution too.
A quote from the study:
"the persistent findings of earlier mean age at diagnosis, advanced state, poorer grade, larger tumor size and fewer cases with estrogen receptors may suggest that true biological differences exist in breast cancer by ethnicity"
It's unfortunate that
A:In every culture I know of, there is a lot of unfounded metaphysical baggage surrounding race
B:A lot of journalists (and a lot of people in general) look everywhere for evidence that might tangentially supported metaphysical BS about race
That said, I'm none too suspicious of this study's authors. There's a big difference between looking for a racial correlation with a hypothetical genetic factor in disease and trying to establish "races" as distinct natural kinds, or even worse taking that already stretched distinction and using it to justify social injustice.
At the time I'm writing this, the may 15th issue of cancer isn't online, I guess we'll have to see what the conclusions throughout the whole paper are like.
You can also tell sex from a skull.free games