"Public Service" Announcement for the Day: Finger in the Bottom

I went to a street fair today in my neighborhood, and saw booths for organ donation, and prostate cancer research. I was very happy to see both. Several black women worked the organ donation booth and I had a nice chat with them. However, the prostate cancer booth was being avoided by black men like it was the entrance to Hell.

Black men in America have the highest incidence of prostate cancer in the world at 180.6 per 100,000 population (read all about it in an article I found on Medscape dealing with cultural barriers black men face about their own health care, here). The article states that during a 4 year period in the late 90's the death rate for black men was 73.0 per 100,000, which was double the death rate for Hispanic men. It's unknown why black men have higher rates of prostate cancer (there are some hypotheses, but I won't address these in this post), but it's thought that the death rate is associated with late detection.

The American Cancer Society recommends screening for prostate cancer starting at 50 years-old, or earlier if you are of African descent or have a family history of disease. Click on the title for more information from a site with good information.

Pediatrician Takes on the Anti-Vaccination Movement

A stumbled upon KevinMD's Blog while I was Googling for information on the anti-vaccination movement, which in turn lead me to the L.A. Times article. Apparently this movement seems to be catching on in the online black community (or maybe just the nutty sites to which I've found myself strangely attracted lately). As there is already a fair amount of mistrust of the medical establishment by the black community due to past unethical behavior such as Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, I think it's important to speak up to address the current rumors and conspiracy theories.

I'm considering starting a series of posts addressing some of the most common medical misconceptions/conspiracy theories floating around. Since the "Natural Remedy" industry is near and dear to my heart (my mother gravitates towards this movement), I will start there on my next post. But I'll take requests.

Haven't been here in awhile

I should probably try to make some effort to fill this space. I'm not going to pretend that I'm some sort of gifted writer, or even well read. But I'll try to write something at least once a day for the next month. Right now I'm interested in the Health Care Reform debate, but it's been difficult to get anyone else (especially other physicians) involved. Maybe I need to do more?