In 2003 Howard University announced its intention to create a databank of the DNA of African Americans, most of whom were patients in their medical centre. Proponents of the decision invoked the routine exclusion of African Americans from research that would give them access to the most up-to-date medical technologies and treatments. They argued that this databank would rectify such exclusions. Opponents argued that such a move tacitly affirmed the biological (genetic) basis of race that had long fuelled racism as well as that the potential costs were not worth the uncertain benefits. Howard University's controversial decision emerges from research in genomic medicine that has added new urgency to the question of the relationship between science and racism. This relationship is the topic of Wald's essay. Scientific disagreements over the relative usefulness of 'race' as a classification in genomic medical research have been obscured by charges of racism and political correctness. The question takes us to the assumptions of population genomics that inform the medical research, and Wald turns to the Human Genome Diversity Project, the new Genographics Project and the 2003 film Journey of Man to consider how racism typically inheres not in the intentions of researchers, but in the language, images and stories through which scientists, journalists and the public inevitably interpret information. Wald demonstrates the importance of understanding those stories as inseparable from scientific and medical research. Her central argument is that if we understand the power of the stories we can better understand the debates surrounding race and genomic medicine, which, in turn, can help us make better ethical and policy decisions and be useful in the practices of science and medicine.
COVID-19 has also revealed our need for new rituals that can bind us across generations.COVID-19 is showing us what links us together as people and what divides us. It has laid bare the incomplete revolution that feminists coming of age in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s have had to reckon with. We have not finished our reckoning with differences across class, race, and ethnicity. This is a moment when all women are under renewed stress-home-schooling children, caring for the sick and the elderly while trying to hold on to their jobs. For academic feminists, it is time to step out of the ivory tower and return to the streets. The pandemic is showing us where we have failed; it cannot show us how to build a better future.
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