The myth of human races

15. Race and Disease: Another Pseudo-Problem

Chapter 15 RACE AND DISEASE: ANOTHER PSEUDO-PROBLEM Race is a small but volatile word, it lacks a clear definition or scientific purpose, yet it persists not only in the lingo of the streets but in the language of the laboratory. James Shreeve 1 We have seen in previous chapters that the assumption that human races exist has led science astray for quite a while. Unfortunately this assumption still persists unchallenged today in the field of medicine. While the physical differences among us, such as shape of nose and hair, are not important, our differences in susceptibility to diseases and our likelihood of inheriting a genetic diseases may be of great significance . Medical researchers, unlike anthropologists, have not yet questioned the use of racial categories as a means for organizing data. They use such techniques to argue that there are clear differences among "racial" and "ethnic" groups in susceptibility to diseases, infant mortality rates, life expectancy, and other markers of public health. The readers of these reports are led to believe that the differences in health among human groups are genetic in nature when they are most likely due to environmental and socioeconomic causes. Many authors of articles and books that deal with racial!ethnic differences in the study of disease are aware that the use of the concept of race is, at best, imprecise. They constantly warn their readers to be aware that economic and cultural factors, and not genetic factors, may be responsible for these differences.2 Nevertheless, without telling us why, they continue to use their racial groupings, hoping that, in some undefined way it will lead to a better understanding of diseases and how they work. However, it is difficult to understand how racial classification , which has been shown to have no explanatory value in understanding human variatit)n, could be a useful tool in finding causes, diagnoses and treatments for human disease. 125 126 Alain Core os We have demonstrated that biological differences between human beings are of degree and are not absolute; that is why it is impossible to classify mankind into races. Scientific information indicates that this also applies to the study of humans and disease. Though certain diseases affect some populations more than others, the same kinds of disease affect all of humanity. The continued use of racial groupings in medical research is therefore harmful because the term "racial" implies something that has been taken for granted but never demonstrated, namely that there are highly significant biological differences between certain groups of people. Even the United Nations has recommended dropping the word "racial" from its lexicon and using only the word "ethnic". "Ethnic" is strictly a social term. Ethnic groups may differ culturally; they may have different traditions, including religious beliefs. They may also have different personal habits such as diet, smoking, use of alcohol, sexual and reproductive patterns, including marriage patterns . These differences may be maintained for long periods of time, even when different ethnic groups live together in the same country. Such variations in the ways they live their lives contribute to the different manifestations of diseases observed in human groups. Differences in disease among ethnic groups may also reflect socioeconomic factors and discrimination. The dropping of racial categories and the use of well-defined ethnic terminology might lead to a better understanding of diseases and their prevention. In many cases medical researchers have confused racial groups which they assumed to exist, with ethnic groups which they have either never described or have described poorly. They have often included data from "racial" and "ethnic" groups in the same table as if they were interchangeable .3 One also can find that the same population is treated as racial in one table and as ethnic in another. One can find examples where people having "Spanish" surnames are treated as an ethnic group in contrast to people with "non-Spanish" surnames. 4 Are we to assume that a woman whose maiden name is McGinnis becomes biologically different when she marries a man named Fernandez? It is obvious from these examples (and there are many others) that the reporting of data on group differences in disease suffers from a lack of precision, standardization, and common sense. There are many studies that compare the health of American blacks and whites. These studies have indicated that there are differences between these two groups' susceptibility to disease. For example, black men are supposedly 40 percent more likely to suffer from lung cancer than are white men, and...