A Racial Gap

Doctors have long known that lung cancer, which kills 160,000 Americans each year, takes a heavier toll among black Americans, particularly black men, than among whites. In part that's because 34% of black men in the U.S. smoke cigarettes, compared with 28% of white men. (Black women tend to smoke less than white women.) It also has to do with differences in income and access to medical care. But there has always been a lingering suspicion that some of the gap might be due to either overt or subconscious discrimination. A study in last week's New England Journal of Medicine appears...