WELL, I KNOW I'M LOW RISK FOR SICKLE CELL AND TAY-SACHS :

Race Is Seen as Real Guide to Track Roots of Disease (NICHOLAS WADE, July 30, 2002, NY Times)

Challenging the widely held view that race is a "biologically meaningless" concept, a leading population geneticist says that race is helpful for understanding ethnic differences in disease and response to drugs.

The geneticist, Dr. Neil Risch of Stanford University, says that genetic differences have arisen among people living on different continents and that race, referring to geographically based ancestry, is a valid way of categorizing these differences.

Dr. Risch's position was prompted by an editorial last year in The New England Journal of Medicine asserting that " `race' is biologically meaningless," and one in Nature Genetics warning of the "confusion and potential harmful effects of using `race' as a variable in medical research."

Dr. Risch's assertion, in a paper in the online journal Genome Biology, comes as researchers and physicians are trying to interpret the DNA data streaming from the Human Genome Project and to make sense of the fact that the pattern of data differs among ethnic groups. [...]

The apparent correlation between race, genetic data and disease has prompted at least two schools of thought among biomedical researchers. One holds that race is so poorly defined that it is not a reliable biological concept and should be banished, if possible, from scientific vocabulary. This is the view espoused by The New England Journal of Medicine.

Many population geneticists, on the other hand, say it is essential to take race and ethnicity into account to understand each group's specific pattern of disease and to ensure that everyone shares equally in the expected benefits of genomic medicine. [...]

Dr. Risch concludes his review by noting that every race and ethnic group within a race has its own set of diseases and clinical priorities, which a new arsenal of genetic tools is poised to address. "We need to value our diversity rather than fear it," he writes. "Ignoring our differences, even if with the best of intentions, will ultimately lead to the disservice of those who are in the minority."

There's a great book about the idiocies of the kind of politically correct science that insists that race is meaningless : PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine (2000) (Sally Satel, M. D.). And here's a link to Dr. Satel's appearance on Booknotes. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 6, 2002 9:22 PM