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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hmaly who wrote (181380)	1/22/2004 3:50:54 PM
From: muzosi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1588157

He is saying that if you took 1000 white guys, regardless of income levels, and 1000 black people, regarless of income levels i must admit that is one possible interpretation of the article but a completely uninformed one. any study worth the paper it's written on would try to isolate the variable which will have obvious and expected effect on the outcome. this is how statistical studies are done. it is obvious and expected that rich people would get better treatment. the interesting question would be if two groups would get different treatment when the income is accounted for. it would be extremely stupid not to control for the income of the people in such a study and i have never seen it done. the question is whether there is racial discrimination and to answer that you have to control for the income. there is no other way around it. your interpretation is completely meaningless.

To: hmaly who wrote (181380)	1/25/2004 11:03:06 PM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1588157

hmaly, I think the article was clearly meant in the way muozzi interpreted it. Here's one item that speaks to it: There's an uncomfortable feeling in the medical community, when a Bay Area doctor has to tell his patients of a certain race, "according to anecdotal information, your race is more at risk for a heart attack. But unfortunately there are no studies that I can utilize to help you." This is actually what Bay Area doctors have to say to Indians, and it's embarrassing for them not to be able to provide more statistical information to their patients. On another note, it's the same uncomfortable feeling women (and men) get when it's discussed how Doerr (a venture capitalist) had to see his wife get cancer before his firm was motivated to invest in personalized medicine where the dosage is tailored to the individual person (this is an issue women have known all along because our body shapes are much smaller than the pharms dosages originally tailored towards men studies. There's actually a Rx RND law now on this one aspect, but apparently not with all of the other gender specific treatments and illnesses.) Fortunately the perspective Doerr has gained from his wife, is becoming open to others. So, that's one issue down, about 100 more to go. But the lemming philosophy is alive and well, because too many VCs would get fired for deviating from Doerr's line of vision, according to the spouse of a VC, so unfortunately women's health products are more or less behind what the male dominated VC industry may or may not see or value until they experience it through someone else. It by no means makes a person bad, and in fact, I've heard very good things here, it simply means the person is human. It's unrealistic to expect any human-being to value things for someone they are not. Having that token one or two women (out of say ten) on each VC firm simply means her perspective seemingly gets drowned out - unless the recognized male VC leader in the VC community happens to experience it thru their wife, in order to see the potential $ opportunity the other half may see more readily. I've heard some rather painful stories thru some biotech pitches made to me by some female entrepreneurs and at the end of them, you sit there and ponder with amazement over the valid business cases some of them have, and their valid business numbers, and it's almost embarrassing to hear the stories they tell you about the medical system's treatment of some of the women illnesses. The disparity is unknowingly large. This disparity isn't because people are bad. It's just because people aren't mind readers and it's unrealistic for humans to inherently have that perspective the other half may have. I personally will feel more comfortable about our medical system when I see around twenty VC firms that are made up of 70% women, out of the 2,500 VC firms that are currently 85% to 100% men. Some of the biotech entrepreneurs I'm running into, provide me with an interpretation that is surprising in this day and age. I believe it'll eventually be the hightech industry that'll solve some of the biotech issues. Regards, Amy J