Genes, race and research ethics: who's minding the store?

Hunt, Linda M.; Megyesi, Mary S.

doi:10.1136/jme.2007.021295

Cited by 32 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(41 reference statements)

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“…We have argued elsewhere that, despite their pervasiveness in medical research, these haphazard practices for labeling race/ ethnicity can seriously undermine the scientific reliability of the findings such studies produce [27].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

A critical review of racial/ethnic variables in osteoporosis and bone density research

2011

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

A critical review of racial/ethnic variables in osteoporosis and bone density research

2011

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“…Using a similar logic, social critics of the use of race in biological analyses also tend to treat any population-speciWc sampling of DNA as a surrogate for larger racial categories, even when scientists speciWcally caution against such a leap (Hunt and Megyesi 2008). For both sides engaged in the race and genetics debate, population-speciWc sampling almost always equates with race.…”

Section: A Shared Basis For Disagreementmentioning

confidence: 95%

Looking for race in all the wrong places: analyzing the lack of productivity in the ongoing debate about race and genetics

Foster

2009

Hum Genet

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The ongoing debate about the relationship between race and genetics is more than a century old and has yet to be resolved. Recent emphasis on population-based patterns in human genetic variation and the implications of those for disease susceptibility and drug response have revitalized that long-standing debate. Both sides in the debate use the same rhetorical device of treating geographic, ancestral, population-specific, and other categories as surrogates for race, but otherwise share no evidentiary standards, analytic frameworks, or scientific goals that might resolve the debate and result in some productive outcome. Setting a common goal of weighing the scientific benefits of using racial and other social heuristics with testable estimates of the potential social harms of racialization can reduce both the unreflexive use of race and other social identities in biological analyses as well as the unreflexive use of racialization in social critiques of genetics. Treating social identities used in genetic studies as objects for investigation rather than artifacts of participant self-report or researcher attribution also will reduce the extent to which genetic studies that report social identities imply that membership in social categories can be defined or predicted using genetic features.

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“…The danger of using race in such a fashion is that it may portray a racial group as genetically, socially, or behaviorally inferior [20]. Suppose, for example, that to optimize perceived functioning among those with systemic sclerosis, health care professionals offered behavioral and coping strategy support only to Hispanics and African Americans.…”

Section: Race In Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many geneticists understand the category "race" is arbitrary, poorly defined, and inadequate, but see it as a means for understanding characteristics shared by many members of a group with common ancestry until advances in medical science make personalized medicine a reality [20].…”

Section: Race In Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the meantime, using race in research can still be a powerful tool because it is associated with many of those environmental factors that influence health outcomes such as socioeconomic status, housing, education, employment, access to resources, diet, psychological stress, and cultural background [17,20]. The problem with using the shorthand "race" to stand in for the many nonbiologic environmental contributors to health status is the problem mentioned earlier: all members of a designated "race" are not subject to those environmental pressures, while many from outside the "race" are.…”

Section: Race In Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

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