Ultimately, the initial report overstated and misrepresented the role of chronic medical conditions, inappropriately alluded to intoxicants, and failed to acknowledge the stark reality that but for the defendant’s knee on George Floyd’s neck, he would not be dead today.
...
“they perpetuated stereotypes about diseases”
...
“For three days, Black Americans sat—and still sit—with the all-too-familiar pangs of being told that the truth is not true. Of fearing that the law would believe a physician’s report over the reality they saw with their own eyes, and have lived with their own lives.”
...
“
Medical science has long been used for the consolidation of power rather than for solidarity with the oppressed. We see how Black mothers are
blamed for their own mortality in childbirth and how starkly
high rates of COVID death in Black communities are preposterously misattributed to differences in
hormone receptors or
clotting factors; all the while letting racism off the hook.
We wish to remind fellow physicians that medical science has never been objective.”
...
“our diagnoses may perpetuate sexist and racist stereotypes”