Science and Race

Identifying race as a source of disease may seem like a practice from the Jim Crow era, resolved after scandals like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study; however, current studies linking genetics with disease could have similar implications for race, according to a report recently published by the Center for American Progress.

“The problem with including race in gene-based medical research is that recent scientific developments undermine the notion that race, as a biological fact, is still in question,” said Jamie Brooks, the project director on race, health and justice at the Center for Genetics and Society.

Brooks argued that race continues to be a misconceived term within the scientific community because of the tendency to create racial categories based on physical appearances such as skin color or hair-type rather than using better explanations like gene flow or cultural breeding. Brooks co-authored the report on geneticizing disease with Meredith King, the Health Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress. Both agreed that race is more social than biological, and should be addressed as such by focusing on public policy rather than developing what King called “magic pills to ameliorate disease.”

The pills King referred to are a topic of focus in the report because of the drug BiDil, the first “race-based” drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. BiDil is designed to treat heart failure specifically among African-Americans, as statistics show that mortality rates from heart disease are much higher among racial minorities. However, soon after it debuted in June of 2005, controversy followed in response to the way the drug was researched and developed.

According to the report by Brooks and King, research on the BiDil overlooked social conditions outside of race that have been proven to contribute to heart disease. Furthermore, scientists only tested the drug on self-identified African-Americans, rather than a variety of races, and groups backing the drug were shown by the media to be linked with Nitromed, the company that produces the pills.
The scandal surrounding BiDil raised concerns for the pursuit of race-based medicine, according to Brooks. She worries that this type of medical research may become a new form of scientific racism in the future; skewing research by placing people in misconstrued categories and keeping people from receiving proper medical care because of their race.

Misconceptions about the link between race and disease have already permeated medical research and American society, according to Brooks and King. The authors found, for example, that sickle-cell anemia, often accepted as prevalent mainly among African American populations, has been shown to occur in many other racial populations as well, and is more likely to be carried by malaria than race. They also point out that the disease Tay-Sachs, which has been associated mainly with Ashkenazi Jewish populations, may in fact be a result of closed-population areas such as those of French Canadians, Louisiana Cajuns or the Pennsylvania Dutch. Both diseases are more likely linked to location, but have been accepted in connection with race.

Dr. Nicole Lurie, the director of the RAND Center for Population Health, urged that environment should be the target of disease research, not race.

“The effect of a crummy neighborhood is similar among blacks and whites,” Lurie stated. “Disease has little to do with race, but a lot to do with place.”

She gave an example of medical research which found that African-American women have more aggressive forms of breast cancer which, other studies show, may actually be caused by an exposure to harsh living conditions rather than any racial aspect.

“Ultimately we’re looking at a discourse that looks primarily at the poor,” said Lisa Crooms, professor of Constitutional Law at Howard University, but Lurie added that poverty and race are often intermingled in American society. In her own research, Lurie found that the highest numbers of breast and prostate cancer cases in Washington, D.C. come from two highly impoverished wards which are also 95 percent African-American.

“Is this about race, or isn’t it about race?” Lurie said. Either way, she believes that the answer is not in high-tech medicine, but in public policy and reform.

Amanda Busse is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.