Abstract
Our projects examining the use of racial and ethnic categories in genetics and biomedical research have been supported by three grants from the Wellcome Trust's Biomedical Ethics Research Programme: 057182 (GTHE); 057180 (RA); and 073524/2/03/2/AW/HH (AS, PM, RA, and GTHE). See also: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/igbis/reg/.
Highlights
In this issue of PLoS Medicine, Lundy Braun and colleagues from the Race, Medicine, and Science Workshop discuss “the trouble with race” [1]
They propose substantial improvements in international scientific standards and clinical training. They suggest that these improvements would help to prevent biomedical research and practice from: (1) reifying the discredited notion of races as natural, genetically distinct subspecies; and (2) treating ethnic groups in stereotypical ways as if they were genetically or socioculturally homogeneous. These seem entirely sensible recommendations given that the descriptive use of racial and ethnic categories to identify differences in health and health care can lead to
This Perspective discusses the following new Essay published in PLoS Medicine: Braun L, Fausto-Sterling A, Fullwiley D, Hammonds EM, Nelson A, et al (2007) Racial categories in medical practice: How useful are they? PLoS Med 4(9): e271. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed
Summary
This Perspective discusses the following new Essay published in PLoS Medicine: Braun L, Fausto-Sterling A, Fullwiley D, Hammonds EM, Nelson A, et al (2007) Racial categories in medical practice: How useful are they? PLoS Med 4(9): e271. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040271. This Perspective discusses the following new Essay published in PLoS Medicine: Braun L, Fausto-Sterling A, Fullwiley D, Hammonds EM, Nelson A, et al (2007) Racial categories in medical practice: How useful are they? In this Essay, the authors address the question of whether it is good medical practice for physicians to “eyeball” a patient’s race when assessing their medical status. While it is crucial to address this drift from description to attribution, our research on the use of racial and ethnic categories in genetics and biomedicine suggests that Braun et al.’s proposals face a number of intractable problems
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