What Surgery and Police Have in Common: Both Kill a Disproportionate Number of Black Men

We seldom think of medicine and law enforcement as professions with parallels. While many exist — both are predominantly white, male and fiercely loyal to their own — the most remarkable attribute they share is a unique brand of public trust that provides them license to cause harm: one with weapons, the other with scalpels.

Surprisingly, by certain counts, the damage is similar.

The FBI estimates that approximately 96 black men die each year in police homicides, deemed justifiable by circumstance. Black men undergoing heart bypass suffer approximately 95 fatalities statistically, after taking account of other factors affecting surgical survival.

In spite of the numbers, the public focuses laser-like on the former and pays minimal attention to the latter.

It’s too bad. Police and surgeons can help each other develop new tools to scrutinize these deaths and hold people accountable. Good data can help.

In the case of bypass surgeries, health researchers have amassed and analyzed mountains of data to understand what leads to fatalities. In a complex process, known as risk adjustment, they consider a vast array of patient-specific factors, such as insurance coverage, presence of other diseases, smoking status, weight, age and income, along with aspects of the surgery itself, such as number of complications, to determine what predicts death.

Identifying and investigating these factors have led to risk-reducing interventions, such that bypass fatalities have fallen substantially, but highly disparately. Over the last decade, the rate for white males declined by 33 percent, while that for black males remained stubbornly steady and fell by only 3 percent, a tenfold difference.

Researchers also use risk-adjustment when comparing mortality rates between groups to account for systematic differences between them. Advanced analyses find that the risk-adjusted mortality rate from bypass surgery for black men is 11 percent higher than that for white men of similar health status.

It’s possible, of course, that these current measures don’t adequately account for key differences in physiology or for the subtle, cumulative effects of differences in access to care. Refinements to the process, however, have yet to eliminate the persistent disparity. It is time to rethink our efforts.

A starting point is examining two key factors omitted from analyses to date: the characteristics of surgeons themselves, such as where and when they trained, and the specific settings in which they operate. Both warrant investigation, as data show that the impact of race on the risk of death is not constant across operating rooms.

Reluctance to delve into this area reflects understandable concerns about malpractice. However, it also reflects a social deference to this group, whose members, like the police, mostly police themselves. Both these factors must be overcome. Identifying whether physician and hospital features play a role in generating the racially disparate bypass outcomes is a step on the road to eliminating them.

Continue reading…

__

‘Trojan Horse’ Debate: We Were Wrong, All Cultures Are Not Equal

“As we are in Britain then the dominant culture has to be British. If that isn’t acceptable to Muslims then they will have to live in a country where their culture is dominant instead of expecting us to change ours to suit them. For years, we all turned a blind eye to the segregation of Muslim pupils. Now it is time to stand up to propagators of barbarism and ignorance”

 

If I have learnt one thing working with children as a teacher, a volunteer and, more recently, a parent, it’s that what children want above all else is to fit in. The desire not to be different must be hard-wired, so urgent is the need of your average nine-year-old to have the same pencil case as every other nine-year-old. Individuality, much prized in adult life, is abhorred by our conservative juniors, who crave acceptance as the thirsty crave water. “Fitting in” is braided into the DNA of every child, regardless of creed or colour. When the deep, resonant bell of human evolution tolls, it says: “Belong, belong, belong.”

 

Integrating children into a new society, then, should not present too much of a problem. A football, some Panini World Cup stickers to trade, One Direction, Harry Potter, 97 episodes of Friends, especially the one where Rachel has a baby: common interests for youngsters are not hard to find. So how have we ended up with a situation where so many Muslims are adrift from the mainstream? Why this scandal in Birmingham where five overwhelmingly Muslim schools, some until recently judged to be outstanding, are to be put into special measures because they have sought to inculcate ideas that are repellent to this country?

 

Let me quote Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a writer and Muslim convert, who told Channel 4 News on Tuesday that she rejected calls by the Prime Minister and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, for schools to promote British values. “In many ways, the problem is creating a hierarchy of cultures when you say you need to promote British values,” she objected. “What does that say to children in a classroom whose heritage harks from outside the British Isles? It says this country has superior moral values and you are coming from some backward culture whose values you … must not consider equal to our own.”

 

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we are saying, Myriam. Spot on! A Muslim girl who winds up in Bolton or Luton should thank her lucky stars she doesn’t live in Sudan – or Pakistan, where, only last month, a woman was stoned to death by her family for the crime of marrying a man of whom they disapproved. Farzana Parveen’s father explained: “I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it.”

 

Are British values superior to Mr Parveen’s? I do hope so.

 

Unfortunately, the great lie underpinning the creed of multiculturalism, as spouted by Francois Cerrah and her ilk, is that all cultures are “equally valid”. Well, patently, they’re not. The reason irate Pakistani patriarchs are not chucking bricks at their errant daughters in the Birmingham Bull Ring is because Britain has a basically uncorrupt police force, a robust judiciary and an enlightened, hard-won system of liberal values that regards women and girls as equals, not third-class citizens.

 

But instead of standing up to barbarism and ignorance, too often we have looked away in embarrassment or fear. How many teachers have averted their gaze when 13-year-old Muslim girls suddenly disappear from the classroom to be taken “home” for a forced marriage, because this would present unwelcome evidence that some cultures are less valid than others?

 

How many health professionals in Bradford are concerned, but never say so, that intermarriage in the Muslim community – 75 per cent of Pakistanis in the city are married to their first cousin – is causing babies to be born blind, deaf and with other disabilities? Back in 2008, when Labour environment minister Phil Woolas said that British Pakistanis were fuelling the rate of birth defects, he was slapped down by Downing Street, with a spokesman for prime minister Gordon Brown saying the issue was not one for ministers to comment on. Government after government has filed this thorny issue in “The Too Difficult Box”, the title of a timely new book edited by former Cabinet minister Charles Clarke.

 

Continue reading…

 

 

Apartheid State of Qatar Launches Campaign for ‘Modest’ Dress Code for Tourists

 

• ‘If you are in Qatar, you are one of us’: Qatar aims to educate tourists on modesty

• Men wearing shorts and singlets in public will be frowned upon

• Women should also avoid wearing garments which are too short or too tight, such as mini-skirts or sleeveless dresses

 

“‘If you are in Qatar, you are one of us’ “These principles are the text within the global tourism ethics law.” Alright then, but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Over here, you won’t wear burqas, or anything traditional like that. Dress like us. Act like us. Or admit you’re just entitled and arrogant racists.”

 

 

Qatar has launched a social media campaign urging tourists to dress “modestly” in public and respect the Islamic country’s values.

 

Along with a Twitter and Instagram account, “reflect your respect” leaflets are being handed out with diagrams of what is and is not acceptable.

 

Short dresses, sleeveless clothing and crop tops are banned for women, while men are also told not to wear shorts and vest tops revealing their chest.

A leaflet handed out as part of the campaign reads: “If you are in Qatar, you are one of us. Help us preserve Qatar’s culture and values, please dress modestly in public places.”

 

It urges people to cover up from their shoulders to knees and avoid leggings.

 

Qatar’s Islamic Culture Centre has launched previous initiatives to educate foreigners on dress codes.

 

“The amount of immodest clothing is growing in public places, especially shopping malls. Such foreigner behaviour conflicts with our traditions,” Nasser Al Maliki, the centre’s public relations chief told Gulf News.

 

“We do not want our kids to be exposed to it or learn from it, and that’s why we will start this campaign.”

 

Qatar, which will host the World Cup in 2022, has a population of just over 2 million people and uses Sharia law as the main source of its legislation.

 

It is home to about 17,500 British nationals and 40,000 more visit every year, according to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

 

Continue reading..

 

__

 

 

‘Little’ Great Britain: Christian Worker Loses Her Job After Being Targeted by Islamic Extremists

Nohad Halawi, who worked at Heathrow Airport, is suing her former employers for unfair dismissal, claiming that she and other Christian staff at the airport were victims of systematic harassment because of their religion.

She claims that she was told that she would go to Hell for her religion, that Jews were responsible for the September 11th terror attacks, and that a friend was reduced to tears having been bullied for wearing a cross.

Continue reading…

____________________________________