Fighting Racism Instead of Disease

The intrusion of critical race theory into medicine and public health threatens the well-being of all Americans—especially nonwhites. 

Connor Harris October 12, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic in the West has disproportionately harmed racial minorities, especially those of African descent. According to a United Nations report from June, African-Americans in the United States had twice the death rate from Covid-19 as other races, as did black and South Asian ethnic groups in the U.K. Death rates among black minority groups in France and Brazil were also markedly elevated.

Many have taken it for granted that these differences stem from poverty and racism, which force nonwhites into crowded housing and jobs with high disease exposure. For Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, Covid-19 “expose[d] what should have been obvious—that unequal access to healthcare, overcrowded housing and pervasive discrimination make our societies less stable, secure and prosperous.”

But a September 10 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association by three doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York identified another possibility: racial differences in levels of TMPRRS2, a protein in cell membranes that many viruses, including coronaviruses, use to gain access to cells. The authors reported that in a sample of 305 patients at Mount Sinai, black patients had stronger expression of the gene that codes for TMPRRS2 in the tissue lining their nostrils than white, Asian, Hispanic, or mixed-race patients..........To Read More...