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Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient
From growth charts to anemia thresholds, clinical standards assume a single human prototype. Why are we still using one-size-fits-all health metrics?
The coördinating team recruited participants from six far-flung locations: Oslo, Norway; Muscat, Oman; Pelotas, Brazil; New Delhi, India; Accra, Ghana; and, as it happens, the city where I live, Davis, California. Among low-income families in urban India, Sachdev noted, ambitious interventions targeting health, sanitation, nutrition, and psychosocial support have failed to increase stature by half a standard deviation, suggesting that differences among sites may reflect disparate physiological baselines. Even with these advances, Pontzer suspects another reason for the reluctance to discuss biological variation: “Differences are dangerous.” Throughout history, claims of inherent disparities have fuelled oppression, from the justification of slavery to the forced sterilization of the poor.
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