Mike Stobbe, AP, December 15, 2008
{snip}
Colon and rectal cancer death rates are now nearly 50 percent higher in blacks than in whites, according to American Cancer Society research being released Monday.
The gap has been growing since the mid-1970s, when colon cancer death rates for the two racial groups were nearly equal.
{snip}
The rate of diagnoses in blacks was about 19 percent higher than it was for whites in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available.
The death rate difference was even more pronounced. Among blacks, there were about 25 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 17 per 100,000 in whites—a 48 percent difference.
The two groups’ death rates were similar until the 1980s when colon cancer began to kill blacks at a higher rate than whites.
Researchers say it’s not clear why black mortality jumped in the 1980s, but it started a gap that continued to widen even after the black rate began to fall again.
{snip}
The screening rate for Hispanics is an even-lower 32 percent, but the death rate for Hispanics—fewer than 13 per 100,000—is lower than it is for whites.
That paradox is not unique to colon cancer: Poorly insured Hispanics have fared better than whites and blacks in several measures of cancer and heart disease.
“It’s a mystery,” said Dr. Daniel Blumenthal, chair of the Morehouse School of Medicine’s Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine.
Original article
(Posted on December 15, 2008)
Comments
I read another version of this story, that was similarly unclear about the causes.
Therefore, the only recourse is for Morris Dees to sue God.
If the colorectal cancer rates of Whites and blacks were nearly equal until the 1970s, at a time when blacks supposedly faced more “discrimination” and “inequality” than they do now, how do these medical nabobs draw the conclusion that it’s because blacks supposedly have “less access to good health care”? Just how does one define “less access”? And if it’s a function of poverty, why do Hispanics many of whom are newly arrived (illegal) immigrants, then why do they have a lower colorectal cancer rate than Whites?
This whole article, typical of AP which is always trying to prove how “mistreated” blacks are, falls apart when subjected to more rigorous analysis.
I am not joking, beans are FABULOUS for a healthy colon (and heart). So are all the veges that go along with bean dishes.
It makes a difference.
Eat your beans folks!
“The gap has been growing since the mid-1970s, when colon cancer death rates for the two racial groups were nearly equal.”
“That paradox is not unique to colon cancer: Poorly insured Hispanics have fared better than whites and blacks in several measures of cancer and heart disease.”/i>
Stress has been claimed as a factor in disease. Purhaps forced integration and being around whites is causing blacks to internalize disease.
Do you reckon diet has anything to do with it? I am gonna guess that a diet with lots of beans is better for your colon than a Big Mac. But I don’t want to imply anything.
“It’s a mystery,” said Dr. Daniel Blumenthal” - Life is full of mysteries. Some genuine and some manufactured. The above “mystery” is manufactured because Dr. Blumenthal denies the obvious reality of race.
“Poorly insured Hispanics” - go to any emergency room and you will see 50% of the patients are Hispanic and getting better medical care than “well insured whites” who still have to pay a co-insurance fee. The Hispanics, thanks to the supreme court, don’t have to pay a thing.
Since the biological differences among races are more than skin deep, it is possible that even if medical care is the same for all groups, the survival rates for various diseases could differ.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13167618/ there is a story “Black women prone to deadlier breast cancer
Thirty years ago many blacks had a healthier diet of such soul food staples as collard greens and various other inexpensive roughage type foods, which are known to reduce the incidence of colon cancer. In recent years if you’ve ever shopped in an inner city supermarket and seen foodstamp-receiving blacks loading their carts with piles of prepared foods you’d understand why their incidence of colon cancer is on the rise.
The 1980’s was when the crack epidemic hit the inner cities. That’s also when black incarceration rates zoomed off the charts. More blacks in prison = more homosexual activity = increase in diseases.
I can’t for a second believe that the daily life of the average black man in the US is worse-off than it was 40 years ago. Are we to believe that blacks were healthier under Jim Crow and segregation?
I think it’s just that the technology for screening did not exist before that time, and since then, whites have been getting them at higher rates than blacks — thus the growing gap.
The story also illustrates the “universal health insurance” fallacy: simply because insurance exists, it does not mean that 1) a treatment will exist for the disease — as with cancer, 2) that even if a treatment does exist, it will be available in a timely fashion — see Canada, or 3) even if 1) and 2) are met, that the person with insurance will take the initiative to actually make doctor appointments and schedule preventative treatment, as seems to be the case with blacks and colon cancer screenings.
Whites have spent a lifetime ingesting chemical laden foods and junk food products.
Most foreigners have had much smaller chemical exposure levels in their food.
How many Americans are addicted to drugs to control their digestion, just so they can eat more pizza/fast food/processed junk?
Oh boy , here we go again . Whites are slowly changing their diets and eating more healthy , blacks are not . Meat , grease and a lack of fiber exacerbates colon cancer . Our depression era ancestors ate a lot of grease and meat but they also ate green vegetables .Then they worked hard from sun up to well after dark burning it out of their systems, most of us do neither . We are by far , more sedentary and do not eat near enough vegetables . You’ve got to eat healthy ,that is what will keep the doctor away .
“if it’s a function of poverty, why do Hispanics many of whom are newly arrived (illegal) immigrants, then why do they have a lower colorectal cancer rate than Whites?”
Newly arived Hispanics are accustomed to eating lots and lots of rice and bean dishes. Every day, every meal.
Dietary fiber plays a huge role in reducing the likelihood one will get colon cancer, and the prepared foods I see typical blacks buying at the supermarket have plenty of salt and fats in them, and nearly no fiber at all.
A great example of dietary differences was displayed in the “Time” magazine cover article “What We Eat” published sometime in the last year. The article showed three families, each a married couple with two children, posing with a week’s worth of groceries each: one family Japanese, one family German, and one American blacks. The Japanese had rice, noodles, some beautiful pieces of fish, and lots of vegetables. The Germans had more mixed starches, fresh meat that had me salivating just looking at it, plenty of fresh fruit, and rather less vegetables. The American blacks had a huge heap of processed, prepared food, lots of soda, lots of salty snacks like potato chips, and they were smiling, as if they saw nothing wrong at all with eating that way. Predicting which of these families would enjoy the poorest lifetime health was an absolute no-brainer, just looking at their respective food selections.
Lunch for us today was homemade split pea soup with leftover turkey in it, pita bread sandwiches with leftover turkey, pepper jack cheese, bean sprouts, home-grown pepper slices and sliced, lightly pickled cucumber, unsweetened iced green tea, and clementines for dessert.
A more recent article covered American childhood obesity, and the diet of the “typical” Hispanic girl in the article was - if anything - worse than for the blacks in “What We Eat”. (The highest childhood obesity rate in the US is among Hispanics). The best diet in the article was - perhaps predictably - that of a white kid who’s family ranches cattle in (I think) Wyoming. The boy was out doing ranch work and intermittantly stuffing his face with fresh fruit, instead of junk food.
Interesting (and very sensible) comments from Mr. Scott! He will live a long and healthy life.
On several occasions, I have had the opportunity to observe the diet of Hindus (eg. at breakfast buffets at hotels, or in Las Vegas). There, where you have a choice of everything imaginable, I noticed they avoided the greasy sausages, steaks, fried potatoes and such foods. Instead, they heaped their trays with an incredible amount of fruit. To me, it was an amazing amount of fruit. They obviously eat more fruit in one day than I would eat in a probably month. Good for them! They’re to be commended. We should do the same. I don’t know what the Hindu cancer rate is, but I’ll bet it must be very low.
On the other side of the picture, I have a black acquaintance who does not consider any meal to be a true “meal” unless there is meat in it. And the meat must be THE CENTER of the meal — not as with the Chinese who consider meat to just be an embellishment, a sort of condiment. She is proud of serving her family meat and has boasted that they ALWAYS have meat at every meal. To the blacks whom I have known, you’re not living well unless you’re eating meat. Yes, they all have problems with cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. I have tried, over the years, to drop little helpful hints about too much red meat, about cholesterol, salt, etc., but these have all fallen on deaf ears. They continue to love their steaks, sodas, fried chicken and fried fish, potato chips and french fries. They are getting up in years now, but nothing has changed.
The MDs these days reccomend that people eat meat precisely as 10:28 AMs description of Chinese: as a sort of flavoring for dishes heavy in carbohydrates and vegetables. One should eat some; women of childbearing years who are vegetarians tend to end up anemic without at least some good source of heme iron, but the amount needed to sustain human health is really not very high.
As for processed food, the quantities of fats and salt present in these are quite amazing, as are portion sizes. Like restaurant food, there’s more of everything - fats and salt included - than in what you would make from scratch at home. We drove north to Boulder for Christmas, and doing some last-minute shopping with my mother at Costco, I made the usual rounds nibbling at the food samples. One was an otherwise nice-looking bit of pot roast that had enough salt in it that it tasted like seawater. Want to cut a lot of salt out of your diet without subjecting yourself to a lifetime of bland, cafeteria-style diet? Use pepper.
I could give up meat completely with some regret; the foods I wouldn’t go without are mixed vegetables, especially in soup, and saltwater fish. My father had quite high blood-pressure before he started taking medication to control it (now he has cancer) No, he did not change his “meat at every meal” eating habit. My own B.P. is so low at 85/45 that I am not allowed to donate blood.
