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4 BODY OF CHRIST NEWSMAY 2015 No weapon that is formed against thee shall pros- per... Isaiah 5417 Often when news reports are released one might look at the report thinking in terms of your occupation. This is what I did when I saw the video of the police confrontation with Eric Garner of Staten Island New York City on July 17 2014. First of all the confrontation was over a trivial matter re selling single cigarettes from packs without tax stamps. The attempted arrest by police was not for assault mur- der burglary or robbery. Garner was a big African American man and he was surrounded and piled on by 4 policemen and one of them applied a choke- hold and subsequently his face was pushed to the ground. While the officers moved to restrain Garner he repeatedly said I cant breathe. Believe me if you walked into a hospital emer- gency room and said those words you would be surrounded immediately by a host of people acting like they were facing an emergency. However those officers surrounding Garner showed not a trace of urgency. When he lost consciousness he was turned on his side to presumably help his breathing. Garner was lying on the sidewalk for seven minutes while the officers waited for an ambulance to arrive. Not one of those individuals and that includes the policemen and the paramedics attempted any type of CPR. I did not see his blood pressure checked. No one got down on the ground to see if he was really breathing. He did not have a pulse oximeter reading done by the paramedics--a simple device you place on the finger to check the oxygen level. It seemed like his life had no value and he died for a trivial reason and no charges were filed. I wonder if any of those people involved ever looked back and wondered if they should have done things differently. In CPR classes taught to even non-medical people you learn that if someone is lying unresponsive on the ground at least check the pulse and get close to the persons mouth and nose to listen to see if they are in fact breathing. This was not done. This might have made the difference between life and death. It seemed like his life had little value and did not matter. This is part of the reason for the statement black lives matter even if people act like they do not matter. On April 4 2015 in North Charleston South Carolina another egregious event hap- pened also for a trivial reason. Walter Scott a black man was stopped for a non-functioning back tail light. He wound up dead. Whatever confrontation he might have had with the policeman lead to his attempt to flee on foot and to his being shot in the back and killed. Eight shots were fired. After he was lying unconscious face down and dead on the ground the policeman stood over him shouting Put your hands behind your back Amazingly the policeman put hand cuffs on the unresponsive man. Again an unresponsive person lying on the ground needs urgent attention with at least an attempt to see if he was even breathing. Instead the police offi- cer went to his car got an object he dropped near Walter Scott in an attempt to plant evidence and accused a dead man of taking his taser. This officer was fired and charged later with murder due to a video taken by a bystander. The officer displayed no remorse and had no apology. That again brings to mind the need to say black lives matter although Walter Scotts life seemingly had no value. The lives of the two men noted are not the only unarmed lives taken over the past few years but I will not enumerate all of them. Let me tell you about an experience I had. I and some fellow volunteers were at a large outdoor fes- tival doing free blood pressure readings. We had a surprising number of people tell us some- thing truly infuriating. There were some African American attendees at this festival who had significant blood pressure elevations. We heard all too often their doctors had told them that black people tend to run higher blood pressures so even though their blood pres- sure readings were high that was acceptable because they were black. We tried to tell them as diplo- matically as we could that ele- vated blood pressure readings are in fact not acceptable no matter what the ethnic group. African Americans are a high risk group re hypertension as this fuels the plague of stroke heart attacks and even kidney failure in our community. So even those of us in the medical community need to be told black lives matter. In 2003 a book was published with the title Unequal Treatment-Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. This book was a report from the Institute of Medicine. It noted that being an ethnic minority by itself puts you at increased risk of receiving lower quality of care and service from the medical profession even if you are in a more advantaged socioeconomic class. It was noted in the book mentioned that for almost every disease stud- ied black Americans received less effective care than white Americans. Minorities received fewer recommended treatments for conditions such as AIDS cancer heart disease hypertension elevated cholesterol and diabetes. This translates to heavier disease burdens and poorer health outcomes. These are problems that persist and our nation needs to consider that something needs to be done to eliminate these health dispari- ties. We need to reach the conclusion that indeed black lives matter but in fact all lives matter and equally so. May God help us to do what we can to achieve health equity. Black Lives Matter Dr. Conner By Byron E. Conner M.D. HEALTH Being an ethnic minority by itself puts you at increased risk of receiving lower quality of care and service from the medical profession even if you are in a more advantaged socioeconomic class. It was noted in the book mentioned that for almost every disease studied black Americans received less effective care than white Americans. 1. PASTOR CHARLES JENKINS - Any Given Sunday 2. DORINDA CLARK COLE - Living It 3. J. MOSS - Grown Folks Gospel 4. JASON CRABB - Through The Fire Best of 5. 3 WINANS BROTHERS - Foreign Land 6. JASON NELSON - Jesus Revealed 7. SPENCER TAYLOR HAIGHWAY QCS - The Godfather 8. BEN TANKARD - Full Tank 2.0 9. ANDREA HELMS - Clap Your Hands 10. KIRK WHALUM - Gospel According to Jazz 4