Californian medical practitioners are at a loss for words when
it comes to describing their feelings about Proposition 54 ““
five words to be exact.
The issue is with the words “medical research subjects and
patients” which was written into an exemption clause of
Proposition 54, a controversial initiative that if passed by voters
in the recall election would prevent state agencies from collecting
data on an individual’s ethnicity.
According to the initiative’s supporters, these five words
are an attempt to exempt the entire medical community from the
effects of the initiative. Many medical practitioners, however, are
worried the term only exempts people who have explicitly agreed to
participate in a medical research project.
Justin Jones, a spokesman for the pro-Proposition 54 American
Civil Rights Coalition, dismissed the medical community’s
claims, saying doctors and medical researchers could continue to
collect and use racial data.
“One way or the other, there is no impact,” he
said.
However, many state medical practitioners say the
initiative’s language is too vague to be taken at face value
and that the initiative could actually have a profound effect on
their ability to conduct research.
If this is the case, the state medical community could lose
tremendous amounts of valuable information, ranging from the spread
of sickle-cell anemia among blacks to information on birth and
death certificates, said Elena Stern, spokeswoman for the Coalition
Against Proposition 54.
“The abundance of information that would still be lost
because of that very narrow exemption is overwhelming,” she
said.
Tom Wood, an opponent of Proposition 54 and co-author of
Proposition 209, a controversial initiative passed in 1996 that
banned the state from using affirmative action, said that even the
racial information on death certificates is crucial medical data
the state stands to lose should the initiative pass.
Such information allows researchers to track disease death rates
among various ethnic communities, such as cancer among Latinos, and
allows them to determine how best to target these communities for a
cure.
“We all would like to live in a colorblind society, but
what this initiative would do is put blinders on us about actual
differences in health access that really affect people in racial
ethnic groups differently,” said Richard Brown, director of
the Center for Health Policy Research at UCLA.
Proponents of Proposition 54 strongly deny that the initiative
would impact the medical community and say health researchers and
doctors have nothing to worry about. Glynn Custred, the other
co-author of Proposition 209, called the medical objections
“marginal” and dismissed them as “industry
grievances.”
But the health community’s concerns could have some legal
implications. Cheryl Harris, a law professor at UCLA, agreed that
the initiative’s language is “too narrow and too
vague” and may have to be resolved by a court should the
initiative pass ““ in which case there may be no telling what
impact Proposition 54 could have.
Meanwhile, supporters of the initiative remain baffled and upset
over the medical community’s objections and continue to
insist their exemption clause ““ and word choice ““ is
sufficient.
“We think the medical exemption is broad enough. If anyone
thinks it’s not, we would be happy to go to the Legislature
with anyone who wants and ask for an exemption,” Jones
said.