Abstract
Public funding for research on the action of drugs in countries like the United States requires that racial classification of research subjects should be considered when defining the composition of the samples as well as in data analysis, sometimes resulting in interpretations that Whites and Blacks differ in their pharmacogenetic profiles. In Brazil, pharmacogenomic results have led to very different interpretations when compared with those obtained in the United States. This is explained as deriving from the genomic heterogeneity of the Brazilian population. This article argues that in the evolving field of pharmacogenomics research in Brazil there is simultaneously both an incorporation and rejection of the US informed race-genes paradigm. We suggest that this must be understood in relation to continuities with national and transnational history of genetic research in Brazil, a differently situated politics of Brazilian public health and the ongoing valorization of miscegenation or race mixture by Brazilian geneticists as a resource for transnational genetic research. Our data derive from anthropological investigation conducted in INCA (Brazilian National Cancer Institute), in Rio de Janeiro, with a focus on the drug warfarin. The criticism of Brazilian scientists regarding the uses of racial categorization includes a revision of mathematical algorithms for drug dosage widely used in clinical procedures around the world. Our analysis reveals how the incorporation of ideas of racial purity and admixture, as it relates to the efficacy of drugs, touches on issues related to the possibility of application of pharmaceutical technologies on a global scale.
Highlights
In the same way that they access their bank accounts and e-mail, physicians and other health professionals in any part of the world can download to their computers, tablets or cell phones a Pharmacogenomics and color/race in Brazil program that calculates the dosage of warfarin anticoagulant to administer to their patients
In order to understand recent discussions about race/color categories in the context of research in pharmacogenomics in Brazil, it is essential to be aware of their background, that is, the scientific work on the biological diversity of the Brazilian population that has been done over the last decade
The tension that we suggest is central to the practice of racializing to de-racialize around incorporation, and rejection of categories of race or continental ancestry in pharmacogenomic research is nowhere more apparent than in the context of transnational research that the Brazilian geneticists are engaged with and what might be described as the political economy surrounding the publication of research
Summary
In the same way that they access their bank accounts and e-mail, physicians and other health professionals in any part of the world can download to their computers, tablets or cell phones a Pharmacogenomics and color/race in Brazil program that calculates the dosage of warfarin anticoagulant to administer to their patients. Authors such as Suarez-Kurtz and the geneticist Sergio Pena have emphasized the mixed race question in Latin America, and especially in Brazil, at the same time criticizing the racial perspective in pharmacogenomics (referred to by the euphemism ‘population-based drug development and prescription’) (see Suarez-Kurtz and Pena 2006a, b; Suarez-Kurtz, 2010; Pena, 2011; Pena et al, 2011) They link the production of knowledge in pharmacogenomics to such a broad question as inequalities in public health policy, these moral claims, somewhat differently to the United States, rest on the need to demolecularize race and genomics as the rest of the article examines. We see parallels and differences in the way that these debates have been critiqued and theorized with the Brazil context, where there is both what might be seen as incorporation and simultaneous rejection of transnational genomic research that makes use in different ways of race and color categories
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
