Pria Anand

“In his wonderful TED talk “A Doctor’s Touch,” physician and author Abraham Verghese relates a story in which Bell divines the shortcut a woman took to travel to the clinic from the color of the clay on the soles of her feet and her job—as a linoleum-factory worker—from a rash on the fingers of her right hand.”
― Pria Anand, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains

“In 2016, a group of doctors surveyed 222 white medical students and residents on their beliefs about their patients’ bodies, asking them to judge the veracity of statements such as “Black people’s blood coagulates more quickly than whites’ ” and “Blacks’ nerve endings are less sensitive than whites’.” Half of the students and residents ascribed to at least one of these false beliefs. Like the doctor who brutalized John Brown, 40 percent of the first-year medical students and 25 percent of the residents agreed with the statement “Blacks’ skin is thicker than whites’.” These beliefs had real-world consequences: when given two mock medical scenarios, one featuring a Black patient and one featuring a white patient, the students and residents who endorsed more of the false beliefs assumed that the Black patient felt less pain than her white counterpart. Worse, they were less likely to adequately treat the Black patient’s pain than they were the white patient’s. Even now, medicine seems in thrall to Mitchell’s assertion that not all pain is equal, disbelieves the essential truth that the “capacity to suffer” is a human universal.”
― Pria Anand, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains