Why Your Race Matters to Your Health
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Deborah Kotz, US News and World Report, October 2, 2008
{snip} In medicine, though, your ethnic background can play a crucial role in determining certain health risks. {snip}
Sometimes, ethnic differences can pose risks for a couple. I was quite surprised by a new finding showing that Asian women married to white men had a 30 percent higher rate of cesarean sections compared with Asian or white couples and white women married to Asian men. The researchers gave a plausible reason why: Previous studies have shown that the average Asian woman’s pelvis is smaller than the average white woman’s and thus less able to accommodate babies of a certain size. “We’re certainly not concluding that these women always need C-sections,” says study coauthor Yasser El-Sayed, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Stanford University Medical Center. But he would be less likely to allow a prolonged labor to continue for hours in such women because a vaginal delivery would be very unlikely.
The study, published in the October issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, also found that pregnant women who were part of an Asian-white couple had a higher rate of gestational diabetes than those who were part of a white-white couple, a nearly 4 percent risk compared to a 1.6 percent risk for white couples. Asian couples, known to have higher rates of diabetes, had nearly a 6 percent risk. What’s intriguing is that white women married to Asian men also had higher rates of gestational diabetes compared with those married to white men, possibly due to a genetic characteristic in the fetus that triggers some sort of interaction with the mother. {snip}
Ethnicity—rather than race—may also be a factor when it comes to other diseases. Researchers are now studying breast cancer in African-American women to see whether genetic differences exist among groups hailing from different areas of Africa. Those who descended from slaves captured from the Bight of Biafra region (East Nigeria, West Cameroon), for instance have an increased risk of developing a particularly aggressive form of inflammatory breast cancer that often strikes in a woman’s 20s or 30s. Other African-American women have a somewhat lower incidence of breast cancer compared with white women, though they still have higher death rates due to later diagnoses and less access to state-of-the-art treatments. {snip}
{snip} While it’s great to be colorblind at cocktail parties and at the ballot box, women and their doctors should be talking about race and ethnicity.
[Editor’s Note: The current issue of The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology can be found here. The October issue, in which the referenced article appears, is not yet posted on the website.]
(Posted on October 2, 2008)
Comments
… but that does not mean anything. Look at Heidi Klum.
Posted by at 6:34 PM on October 2
…Asian women married to white men had a 30 percent higher rate of cesarean sections compared with Asian or white couples and white women married to Asian men.
I don’t know if there’s a connection but I’ll add this to the mix.
Last fall, we hired a white college age male. His girlfriend is Korean. He got her pregnant and they were planning to have the baby but the baby so miss-formed that the doctor recommended, and she had, an abortion. When it happened, I wondered if there was an incompatibility of genes. It would be interesting to learn if there are a greater number of sever birth defects associated with mixed-race pregnancies.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 7:12 PM on October 2
Interesting.
The federal government requires that research include ethic minorities because their physiology may be different from European-Americans.
However, they insist that there are no intelligence or personality differences.
As a psychologist, I used to think that IQ and personality were 60% genetic. But recent studies have convinced me that it’s closer to 80% genetic.
Posted by at 7:15 PM on October 2
How many more of our People must be allowed to put themselves, and us, their racial brothers and sisters, through elemental truths which are proven harmful to us by 10,000 generations of proof of the obvious?
BTW…when is Jared Taylor going to be in California?
Posted by at 9:15 PM on October 2
Some idiot put in a comment that race is not a useful biological concept. I already put in a comment that it would be foolish to assume that racial differences end where our knowledge ends. I wrote that we should be open-minded about racial differences. Perhaps some other amreners could counter the anti-race post I mentioned - and I hope you watch your spelling and punctuation when you do and be polite about it.
Posted by jewamongyou at 11:31 PM on October 2
There are differences in rates of hypertension among the races too… from what I’ve read, blacks are more likely to suffer from hypertension, for whatever reason. Different antihypertensive drugs work better for people of different races, too.
As for women of one group or another ending up with more cesarean sections… I’ve typed up reports for a number of very small women pregnant with the children of very large men, and there is a higher cesarean section rate for them too. I guess nobody thinks of how difficult the labor might be for the tiny woman until she’s in the middle of it.
Posted by at 1:58 AM on October 3
This is an extremely important topic, and one that needs more attention but is often shunned because studies having to do with race/ethnicity are unfortunately taboo in most Western countries.
As an individual of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry who also works as a pediatrician, I have known many fellow Jews and Jewish children who suffer from diseases related to our ethnicity. Because of our ethnic background Ashkenazi Jews are at risk for a host of (genetically transmitted) disorders and diseases…of which the following are a few:
* Bloom syndrome
* Bipolar disorder
* Breast cancer and ovarian cancer (due to higher distribution of BRCA1 and BRCA2)
* Canavan disease
* Colorectal cancer due to hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC)
* Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (non-classical form)
* Congenital hyperinsulinism (PHHI)
* Crohn’s disease (the NOD2/CARD15 locus appears to be implicated)
* Cystic fibrosis
* Familial dysautonomia (Riley-Day Syndrome)
* Fanconi anemia
* Gaucher’s disease
* Hemophilia C
* Kaposi’s sarcoma (chronic form)
* Mucolipidosis IV
* Niemann-Pick disease
* Pemphigus vulgaris
* Tay-Sachs disease
* Torsion dystonia
* Von Gierke disease
* …plus others.
- SOURCE: http://www.jewishgeneticscenter.org/
Another Jewish ethnic group, Sephardic Jews, also suffer from specific genetic disorders as well, which to name a few are:
* Beta-Thalassemia
* Familial Mediterranean fever
* Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency and Gilbert’s Syndrome
* Glycogen storage disease type III
* Machado-Joseph disease
* …plus others.
- SOURCE: http://www.jewishgeneticscenter.org/
As you can see just from this single example, this is no ‘minor matter’ as so many modern medical people will try to tell you. There is no doubt that diseases and disorders which effect specific ethnic groups need MUCH more research and attention.
Perhaps we should invent a field of medicine called “ethnomedicine” which deals with the interaction between medical issues and ethnicity — this is direly needed because the interaction between them is undeniable!
I browse this website a few times a week but don’t post much on these message boards; however, I read this article and since it is too important to ignore I would like to thank this website for bringing this critical issue to the attention of a wider audience.
Posted by Jewish race realist at 3:48 AM on October 3
Something is amiss here. I’ve read studies that show Asian women have relatively larger birth canals than White or Blacks so as to accommodate the larger head size of the infants during birth. Black women, despite their larger lower bodies, have narrower birth canals because Black babies have relatively smaller heads in proportion to their overall physical size.
This would make sense, considering the strong correlation between cranial size and IQ.
Perhaps the Asian-White admixture produces an infant will both a large cranium and a larger-than-normal body which is causing the problems.
Also, due to malpractice fears, C-Sections are one of the most widely over-used, unnecessary surgical procedures in the medical field. So to draw conclusions about its frequency of use in these cases is rather dubious.
No doubt Heidi Klum had a much easier time giving birth to her mix-raced child than to her first all-white child. The most difficult part of the birth was probably looking at the child for the first time and convincing herself that he was ‘beautiful.’
Posted by at 8:53 AM on October 3
Some idiot put in a comment that race is not a useful biological concept. I already put in a comment that it would be foolish to assume that racial differences end where our knowledge ends. I wrote that we should be open-minded about racial differences. Perhaps some other amreners could counter the anti-race post I mentioned - and I hope you watch your spelling and punctuation when you do and be polite about it.
Posted by jewamongyou at 11:31 PM on October 2
jewamongyou,
Here is the comment I posted there. Let’s see
if they allow it -
Multiculturalists always say race is a social construct. Doesn’t this prove race isn’t a social construct ? But
something very real and valid.
Posted by Dr. Caligari at 10:59 AM on October 3
We all know white male-asian female couples are common, but increasingly I’ve seen many white women with americanized Indians and white male-hispanic female couples as well. Mestizos are smaller on average and like their mongoloid cousins in east asia, also have larger skulls.
I’ve met some very bright subcontinental Indians but many did not have cranial capacities that reflected their intelligence. I would argue that ethnicity and IQ are the best indicators of how intelligent a person is.
Anyway, this article is just one more reason to date within your own race.
Posted by IAW at 11:26 AM on October 3
We’re talking about matters of life and death here…but any person who dares bring up information like this is called a Nazi (the N-word for whites)…Goes to show you that political correctness once again trumps safeguarding health and saving lives.
Posted by BAW at 2:00 PM on October 3
I believe Asian women have fewer Caesarian sections than white women overall, but if Asian women with white husbands have more, perhaps what is at work here is the shape of the infant’s cranium (viewed from the top, a caucasian skull is elongated from front-to-back, while an Asian’s is more circular) and the Asian woman’s narrower hips, compared with those of a white lady.
American hospitals also use C-sections more often than anywhere else. As 8:53 AM suggested, liability fears are probably at work here. “Malpractice” in the USA has come to mean “things didn’t work perfectly, even if the doctor did nothing wrong”. American doctors probably look at an Asian gal and think “petit, narrow hips… C-section” pretty much automatically.
My own wife is on the small side, but she managed our daughter without a C-section. I held her hand and tried not to watch. I had no idea her hands were that strong. My own mother (5’5”) dryly commented that when she gave birth to me, my head was so big she thought she was going to die.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 2:44 PM on October 3
It’s a shame that taller women with large bone structure are not sought after by men of similar body type. Such women would be far more likely to pass on traits for above-average height and musculature, and not need that C-section.
Most regrettably, men of such build seem to prefer tiny women over larger women who may be a better physical match. This is the case of my younger brother, who is taller than me, with muscles galore, and his tiny wife, who at least is white.
Still, with this stacked against me, I won’t give up. I’m considering transferring to a university with a big football program to help my chances. Maybe Nebraska…
but I’ll have to start lying about my age.
Posted by Anglokraut at 3:51 PM on October 3
Anglokraut, I’m with you and have had similar dating experiences. I’m a 6’1” white woman. In my younger days, I came from a place and time where height in a woman was not much of a blessing (at least in terms of getting men, unless you prefer men half your size). And although I definitely wasn’t ugly, it did seem to me that all the big guys wanted really, really tiny women.
It seemed that most of the men who wanted me have always been shorter than me, sometimes much shorter. Sorry, guys—although I’ve been friends with a lot of shorter men, the physical fit between bodies just isn’t all that great. And unfortunately, I do find it a turn-off if I’m a LOT bigger than the guy.
Posted by at 10:54 PM on October 3
It’s true that here in America, cesarean sections are overdone. Some of the reasons fall under the umbrella of “CYA”. It seems to me that not very many doctors are willing to let the woman have a relatively relaxed labor, but instead are interested in getting the infant out as soon as possible, even if that means makine the labor more painful for the mother.
I have read that midwives have fewer complications when attending normal births than a lot of medical doctors. They allow the woman to relax and are not pushy about the pace of delivery. Midwife-attended births are also rumored to produce less tearing of the mother’s delicate tissues, whereas many medical doctors still use episiotomies.
Still, I have personally transcribed more than a few reports over the years where there was “cephalopelvic disproprortion” between a mother’s small pelvis and a relatively large child, and sometimes the doctor stated that the father of the kid was a lot larger than the mother.
Posted by at 2:14 AM on October 4
It has more to do with body size than the size of the head, because a newborn’s skull enlongates when coming through the birth canal, since the bones in the skull are nor yet fused. My son was born with an incredibly cone shaped head that took a few days to form into a more rounded shape.
Posted by at 1:55 PM on October 4