An abuse of a great need for a political point

When editors see an opportunity…

Whilst I do not wish to down-play the agony of those who wait for an organ transplant and the grief of those whose loved ones do not receive one in time, it is a little ingenious to use organ transplant resources in the anti-cognitive-racism game that is presently being played out in the UK and probably elsewhere with perhaps more ferocity. I also understand that headlines must be catchy if they are to draw the attention of the prospective reader, so when I saw the headline ‘Black patients wait up to six months longer for organs’ (BBC News) (or more fully on the article itself ‘Organ transplants: Black people wait up to six months longer, NHS figures show’ my interest was aroused.

I hope those who saw the headline read it, as though the headline hints at racism thereby suggesting endemic racism is present, the facts mentioned in the article belie that accusation. White skinned people wait on average 488 days, whilst black skinned people wait 735 days. That does suggest an imbalance of some kind, but the cause of that imbalance is not the colour of the skin but the relative sizes of the pools of organs available. If we ignore any overlap in the pools of organs from black skinned and white-skinned people, the pool for black skinned is proportionately half the size of that available for white skinned people (the article is however slightly thin on the ground for this assertion, but let it be for now), therefore, on the basis of a non-rigorous calculation I would expect to see waiting days for white-skinned people to be only 50% that of black (mathematicians, please correct me), but the actual waiting time is around 66% suggesting that proportionately speaking black-skinned people have shorter waiting times taking into account the pool of resources available.

Curiously, which is why I suggest that there is covert racism behind the article, there is also a reference in the article to the waiting times of Asian people being 650 days, but no further information is given. Given that Asian people wait up to three months longer (longer than what we might ask) why do they not come up for greater attention in the article?

The article does go on to speak of better things, the benefits of transplants, some of the results, and the schemes available and is to be commended for that, but we do not need to use a race card to advertise such things.

Do we?