Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth

Chapter 5. Race in Ancestry, Forensics, and Disease

158 CHAPTER 5 W E HAVE ALREADY covered a lot of ground discussing genes as they relate to human origins and diversity in various contexts. But we haven’t finished yet, for race and genes have also figured widely in recent discussions of medicine, individual ancestry, and forensics, three areas that we’ve so far only touched in passing, yet are the focus of enormous popular and scientific interest. All three of these endeavors have been the target of large-scale government-funded or privately funded scientific projects, and parts of each are also embedded in mainstream biological research on the human genome. In addition, these endeavors have attracted commercial interest, making them not only highly visible in the popular press but also quite lucrative as approaches to a general understanding of human genetics. Each of the three areas we examine in this chapter is complex, and a simple “use it or lose it” stance on any of them would be short-sighted. The use of race in understanding disease is a particularly pointed subject. Why wouldn’t we want to use any tool possible in the attempt to characterize and stop disease ? And if we are to use any approach possible, then the use of race in disease studies should certainly not be off-limits to researchers if it has utility and particularly if it is the only way to get the job done. Preventing and reducing crime is an important aspect of modern social life, right? Why not use every tool available to make society safer? And an individual’s heritage and ancestry can be an important aspect of that person’s psyche. Knowing where you come from, to whom you are related, and what culture you identify with are very important aspects of anyone’s psychological makeup. Especially if you happen to be a member of a disenfranchised group or a member of a community that has experienced historical events involving forced dispersion or diaspora. Why RACEINANCESTRY, FORENSICS,ANDDISEASE RACE IN ANCESTRY, FORENSICS, AND DISEASE 159 shouldn’t we use genetics and race to approach these important aspects of modern life? We have tried to make it clear throughout this book that our interest here is strictly in the scientific aspects of the concept of race, so we will not delve too deeply into the ethical or political issues involved in these three areas, as interesting and important as they are to the subject. And while some readers might feel it is impossible to separate ethics and science in this arena, we feel that a cogent examination of the scientific aspects of the use of “race” in modern biology can add greatly to clarifying our understandings of the ambiguities this concept raises. So our purpose in this chapter is to examine the scientific advantages and disadvantages of using race in the three areas we have singled out. As with the rest of this book, we focus almost entirely on the science involved in these approaches and make our assessment of their validities based purely on the science. In doing this we address three critical aspects of the science concerned. First, by explaining what is involved in the approaches we examine, we hope to demonstrate the scientific strengths and weaknesses of using the notion of “race” in these endeavors. Second, we hope to examine how useful “race” has been to the overall goal of each of them. And finally, we ask whether approaches employing the concept of “race” are necessary to the accomplishment of the goals of the three endeavors or whether the use of race may simply be a convenience that can be replaced by some other approach. In doing this we are not advocating the immediate trashing of the use of stratification of population along racial lines in any of these three areas, although we do feel that this would in fact be for the best. We are simply pointing out that while race-based approaches may be common today, we most likely will be using other approaches that do not involve the concept of race tomorrow. There are three reasons to draw this conclusion . First, we feel that the use of race in these three areas is sometimes flawed theoretically ; and if the use of race is deficient on first principles, then we probably should stop using it. Second, we hope to show that there are alternative ways that do not involve race-based approaches to accomplish the goals of each of the three endeavors...