So here’s a thought.
Throughout my working career as a general practitioner I was increasingly aware, both from experience with my patients and through the media, that the inequality of treatment for First Nation Peoples and people of colour was endemic.
Significant amounts of hand ringing, political navel gazing, and academic pontification did not bring enlightenment.
Through my work, and with the added insight of being able to evaluate genetic variations for each individual, it became increasingly obvious that this variation in the ability to mount a healing inflammatory response and the ability to stem blood loss related to survival success.
The emerging science of genetic variation and epigenetics goes some way in explaining that when you place individuals in a stressful, nutritionally inappropriate environment with excessive macronutrients and paucity of micronutrients something gets out of whack!
The observation of the problems that colonisation brings, and the understanding of inter-generational epigenetic tagging, affords insight into the effects of a stressful milieu and inflammatory environment. This over alerts the hypopituitary adrenal axis and formulates an individual less able to, or more able to, react to life events with the cortisol causality being inflammation . The added complication of vital nutrient deficiencies such as vitamin D caused by skin colour, working environment and costly essential nutrient containing foods compound the issues. Unwanted, wrongly signalled inflammation damages biological pathways.
Interestingly fertility is maintained at the expense of other functions as the drivers of DNA propagation remain dominant.
My work hinted strongly toward those First Nations Peoples as having a more effective inflammatory and haemostasis profile in an evolutionary sense, but when smothered in a high carbohydrate environment this advantage was lost. The ‘over healing’ response transformed into elevated inflammatory expression manifested in cardiovascular disease and, amongst other so called western life style diseases, the dreaded kidney destroying diabetes.
Pharmac’s implicit black lives don’t matter attitude to the latest generation kidney saving diabetic agents is part of the endemic perversity we wreak on our People of Colour and First Nation Peoples.
The academic models that crucify cholesterol as the cause of all things bad is worn out and well passed it’s used by date.
A systems biology approach respecting individual genetic variation is the new paradigm which will allow a logical approach to resolving some of the inequality in health care we see every day in this country.
Just a thought.