Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease

By N. Risch, E. Burchard, E. Ziv, Hua Tang. Genome Biology, 2002

787 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A debate has arisen regarding the validity of racial/ethnic categories for biomedical and genetic research. Some claim 'no biological basis for race' while others advocate a 'race-neutral' approach, using genetic clustering rather than self-identified ethnicity for human genetic categorization. We provide an epidemiologic perspective on the issue of human categorization in biomedical and genetic research that strongly supports the continued use of self-identified race and ethnicity.

Subfields: Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/70e460b8f62506673b45954b2befd62268f5d2f0

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In Genetics

Citations in the corpus

With Malice Towards None: Assessing Uncertainty via Equalized Coverage (2019, background): “[38] argue that “identical treatment is not equal treatment” and that “a race-neutral or color-blind approach to biomedical research is neither equitable nor advantageous, and would not lead to a reduction of disparities in disease risk or treatment efficacies between groups.”
Genetic structure, self-identified race/ethnicity, and confounding in case-control association studies. (2005, neutral): “…researchers performing studies without racial/ethnic labels should be wary of characterizing difference between genetically defined clusters as genetic in origin, since social, cultural, economic, behavioral, and other environmental factors may result in extreme confounding (Risch et al. 2002).”
Introduction: Race, Genetics, and Disease (2008, background): “Some researchers studying the genetics of difference have argued that there is significant biological variation between different racial and ethnic groups in disease susceptibility and drug response and that knowledge of these differences would be useful for medical diagnosis and treatment (Risch et”
How race becomes biology: embodiment of social inequality. (2009, background): “Yet some researchers still defend race as a useful framework for describing human genetic variation—and for identifying genetic influences on racial differences in disease (Risch et al., 2002; Gonzalez Burchard et al., 2003; Bamshad et al., 2004).”
Understanding Racial/ethnic Disparities in Health: Sociological Contributions (2010, background): “These researchers argue that data from multiple loci on the human genome can provide fairly accurate characterization of individuals into continental ancestral groups that approximate our current racial categories (Risch et al. 2002).”
The Nature of Race (2015, neutral): “(Risch et al., 2002)”
Epigenetics and the embodiment of race: Developmental origins of US racial disparities in cardiovascular health (2009, background): “…(Allocco et al., 2007; Calafell, 2003; Hinds et al., 2005; Lao et al., 2006; Redon et al., 2006; Rosenberg et al., 2002; Tang et al., 2005), and that disease-causing alleles are likely to be among those variants that segregate between these groups (Burchard et al., 2003; Risch et al., 2002).”