The Atlantic, April 13, 2015.
Researchers are looking in the wrong place: White people live longer not because of their DNA but because of inequality.
As a thought experiment, say that scientists got ancestry right and cooked up a drug that closed the cardiovascular disease mortality gap. Would it do any good? Considering that more than half a million black residents on the south and west sides of Chicago live in pharmacy deserts, the answer isn’t so clear. “Even if you have a prescription from physician, do you have access to a pharmacy?” asked Dima Qato, the lead author of the breakthrough study on Chicago’s pharmacy deserts. What good is a silver-bullet drug without an equitable delivery system?