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Comment by nonbel | Hacker News Reader

>"The researchers found that black women have a mortality rate of 10.1 per 100,000. For white women, the rate is 4.7 per 100,000. Past estimates had those rates at 5.7 and 3.2, respectively."

Mortality rate isn't really the chances of dying from the cancer though. It looks like a variation on the old frequencies vs probabilities confusion.

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Methodological choice aside, I am primarily shocked by the size of the racial disparity (I mean, I have expected it, but not this big).

Black are generally more prone to the claws of sociological economic Literacy disparities.

Lesser education or of poorer quality, + poverty = bad/no sex ed.

This is true to most minorities that suffer(ed) from discrimination.

It's am uphill battle to Remedy this. I wonder where Hispanics would land. I assuse in-between.

Shocking numbers. Really.

They also have worse access to screening and preventative care.

Why wouldn't it just be genetically related like so many other diseases whose prevalence vary by race?

Because unlike regionally based illnesses we didn't discover a genetic disposition. And these things are well researched due to the need to control for variables. Hpv is prevalent globally, not at all a regional issue. Our genes treat it equally, because its prevalence normalised its effects.

Regional differences might actually cause a nasty strain of hpv to arise, and it would again effect us equally if infected.

It's pretty interesting to look at research on this; it's not just SES and literacy. Nor is genetics to blame in many situations. I don't have access right now to the enormous pile of literature I have at home about this (printed on paper!!!) but as an example look at variation in wait time in emergency rooms, for kids, by race/ethnicity. To address your question about Hispanics directly in this situation, Hispanic kids waited 10.4% longer than white kids for care in the same emergency rooms. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2796312/

ED wait times are an interesting little side branch of study because they're a proxy for how people are treated by the medical establishment; they're not genetic or based on lifestyle choices; they don't rely on educational level etc.; and they're unconscious: no one in the ED is a jerk saying "let that person wait longer because of their background!"

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