Tag Archives: death

How Do Physicians and Non-Physicians Want to Die?











Cross-posted at Pacific StandardThe Huffington Post, and BlogHer.


The Unsung Heroes of the Crash Landing in San Francisco











Cross-posted at JezebelPolicyMic, Huffington Post, and BlogHer.


Red Bull’s Historically Stupid Thanksgiving Fantasy

Still from a 2013 Red Bull commercial:

Red Bull TV Commercial





It’s the little things, you know.

Thanks to Jeff S. for the tip!


The Death Penalty, Race, and the Victim

There is much to be worried about when one considers the role racial discrimination plays in delivering the death penalty.  Scholars are newly looking to the way that the race of homicide victims, instead of the defendants, shape outcomes.  It turns out a disproportionate number of people who are executed under the death penalty have been convicted of murdering a white person (Amnesty International):

“[H]olding all other factors constant,” Amnesty International summarizes, “the single most reliable predictor of whether someone will be sentenced to death is the race of the victim.”



Who Would You Shoot?

In 2002, a study by Joshua Correll and colleagues, called The Police Officer’s Dilemma, was published. In the study, researchers reported that they presented photos of black and white men holding either a gun or a non-threatening object (like a wallet) in a video game style setting.  Participants were asked to make a rapid decision to “shoot” or “don’t shoot” each of the men based on whether the target was armed.

They found that people hesitated longer to shoot an armed white target (and they were more likely to accidentally not shoot). Participants were quicker and more accurate with black armed targets but there were more “false alarms” (shooting them when they were unarmed). These effects were present even though participants did not hold any explicit discriminatory views and wanted to treat all targets fairly.

The effect we see here is a subconscious but measurable preference to give white men the benefit of the doubt in these ambiguous situations. Decision times can vary by a fraction of a second, but that fraction can mean life or death for the person on the other end of the gun.

A terrible reminder of this bias was brought back into the headlines on March 2nd when a black student in Gainesville Florida was shot in the face with a rifle by a police officer. The conditions surrounding the shooting are murky, as the police are extremely hesitant to release details.

It appears that Kofi Adu-Brempong, an international graduate student and teacher’s assistant, was in a stress-induced panic and was worried about his student visa. On the day of the incident, his neighbors heard yelling in his apartment and called the police. It has been suggested that he may have suffered from some mental health problems that related to his panics (although this is not known for sure) and that he had resisted police in the past.

Even so, when the police arrived they broke down his door, citing that they did not know if there was someone else in danger inside the apartment. Adu refused to cooperate and the situation escalated to the point where police tried to subdue him with a tazer and a bean-bag gun. Then a policeman shot him. Adu is now in the hospital in critical condition and has sustained serious damages to his tongue and lower jaw. The police claimed that Adu was wielding a lead pipe and a knife and started violently threatening them with the weapons.

In fact, there was no lead pipe and there was no knife in his hand. When the police approached Adu after he had been shot, the pipe showed itself to be a cane- a cane that Adu constantly used due to a case of childhood polio. And the knife they saw in his hand was actually sitting on the kitchen counter.

Instances like these are tragic reminders of the mistakes that can be made in split second decisions and how race can play into those decisions.


Lauren McGuire is an assistant to a disability activist.  She’s just launched her own blog, The Fatal Foxtrot, that is focused on the awkward passage into adulthood.  

Race and the Life Expectancy of People with Down Syndrome

This post originally appeared in 2010.

Most of us familiar with Down‘s Syndrome know that it brings characteristic facial features and delayed or impaired cognitive development. People with Down, however, are also more vulnerable than the general population to diabetes, leukemia, and infectious and autoimmune disease, and about 40% are born with heart defects.

For most of history, then, the life expectancy of people with Down was very low.  But, with advances in knowledge and access to health care, life expectancy has risen dramatically… especially for white people:

The Centers for Disease Control explain that severity of Down does not vary by race, so most likely the cause of the gap in life expectancy is differences in the quantity and quality of health care.

Possibilities include differences in factors that may be associated with improved health in the general population such as socioeconomic status, education, community support, medical or surgical treatment of serious complications, or access to, use of, or quality of preventative health care.

This is just one striking example of the wide racial gap in health outcomes and access to care.  We see data with similar patterns most everywhere we look.  As examples, pre-term birthscancer diagnosis and treatment, and likelihood of living near a toxic release facility.

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, via Family Inequality.


Does Abortion Cause Infanticide?

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.




The killers are not who you think. They’re moms.

Worse, he warns, infanticide has skyrocketed.


Really? The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports has a different picture.





















The U.S. #1 in Early Deaths





Via Citings and Sightings.
