News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:A biased test kept Black people from getting a kidney tra... by bugglebeetle on Monday April 01, 2024 @04:28PM (#39898847)
It’s only diagnostically relevant in the context of imprecise population categories, lack of knowledge about disease origins, and the absence of genetic testing for conditions (i.e not in 2024). As others have pointed out in this thread, for example, the conflation of Black with prone to sickle cell disease is erroneous and more correctly determined by ancestry proximate to the region of the disease’s origin. Similarly, “white” in the US includes a wide swathe of genetics with various degrees of predisposition to melanoma (e.g. Northern vs Southern European).
Re:A biased test kept Black people from getting a kidney tra... by NovemberWhiskey on Monday April 01, 2024 @04:41PM (#39899042)
It's not diagnostically determinative, but it's diagnostically relevant. Not all black people have sickle cell disease, nor do all people of sub-Saharan African descent, nor do all people who have one parent known to a carrier of variant HBB genes etc. We're just talking about the degree of statistical likelihood that something from a patient history points to a diagnosis.
Re:A biased test kept Black people from getting a kidney tra... by Chris2048 on Monday April 01, 2024 @04:58PM (#39899252)
> more correctly determined by ancestry proximate to the region of the disease’s origin

Is the better metric just as easy to determine though? In other words, it may be a mere proxy to a "better" metric, but that means it's still correlative, and we can only abandon it if we have no better proxy.

Re:A biased test kept Black people from getting a kidney tra... by bugglebeetle on Monday April 01, 2024 @05:01PM (#39899273)
In most modern health care settings, yes.
Re:A biased test kept Black people from getting a kidney tra... by Chris2048 on Monday April 01, 2024 @05:17PM (#39899476)
You're saying we can determine ancestry proximatry genetically?