Race and Medicine
Neil Risch states that numerous studies over past decades have documented biological differences among the races with regard to susceptibility and natural history of chronic diseases. Genes may be under strong selection in response to local diseases. For example, people who are duffy negative tend to have higher resistance to malaria. Most Africans are duffy negative and most non-Africans are duffy positive. A number of genetic diseases more prevalent in malaria-afflicted areas may provide some genetic resistance to malaria including sickle cell disease, thalassaemias, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, and possibly others. Cystic fibrosis is the most common life-limiting autosomal recessive disease among people of European heritage. Numerous hypotheses have suggested that it provides a heterozygote advantage by giving resistance to diseases earlier common in Europe.
Information about a person's population of origin may in some situations help making a diagnosis and adverse drug responses may vary between such groups. Because of the correlation between self-identified race and genetic clusters, medical treatments whose results are influenced by genetics often have varying rates of success between self-defined racial groups. For this reason, some doctors consider a patient’s race while attempting to identify the most effective possible treatment, and some drugs are marketed with race-specific instructions. Jorde and Wooding (2004) have argued that, because of the genetic variation within racial groups, when "it finally becomes feasible and available, individual genetic assessment of relevant genes will probably prove more useful than race in medical decision making." Even so, race will continue to be important when looking at groups instead of individuals such as in epidemiologic research.
Read more about this topic: Race And Genetics
Famous quotes containing the words race and, race and/or medicine:
“Many times man lives and dies
Betweeen his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I never feel so conscious of my race as I do when I stand before a class of twenty-five young men and women eager to learn about what it is to be black in America.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American college professor. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B3 (July 27, 1994)
“He said that private practice in medicine ought to be put down by law. When I asked him why, he said that private doctors were ignorant licensed murders.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)