How Medicine Erased Black Women from a ‘White Man’s Disease’

December 22, 2021

(STAT News) – AS sits in a kind of thorny tangle, where biological mystery, gender discrimination, sex differences, racism, and genetics meet. It’s hardly the only “white disease” (a label pasted onto both cystic fibrosis and multiple sclerosis). Nor is it the only one where women run a greater risk of being misdiagnosed (look no farther than the humble heart attack). It probably isn’t alone in having the dubious distinction of being both: These forces, after all, lurk in seemingly every corner of medicine. What sets AS apart is the way patients have begun naming the misogyny and the misuse of race that’s shaped their illness, untangling how it came to be. Even as science shifts, they’ve seen, old clinical habits of mind remain, which can in turn affect the science. (Read More)