Mixed Race Studies

Implications of Genetic Diversity in Mexico

Biopolitical Times
Center for Genetics and Society
2014-06-25

Pete Shanks

The category Latino is a valid cultural artifact, and often self-identified. But it’s not really a race in any modern sense of the term, and the genetic evidence surely shows that it is far too broad a grouping to be scientifically appropriate without serious qualification. Yet it is used, even in some current peer-reviewed papers.

One that does not use the term is an article published in Science this month on the genetics of Mexico. The country’s population is large and ethnically, linguistically, geographically, economically and culturally diverse. It is also genetically complex, and this article by a large and distinguished team of scientists provides new details. It also suggests some important implications for genomic research and likely for personalized medicine in general:

The genetics of Mexico recapitulates Native American substructure and affects biomedical traits

The study included 511 Native Mexican individuals from 20 indigenous groups, and 500 mestizo (mixed-race) individuals from ten states; nearly a million SNPs were analyzed for each. The variation was striking…

Read the entire article here.

Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation

University of North Carolina Press
May 2009
328 pages
36 illus., 5 tables, notes, bibl., index
6.125 x 9.25
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8078-5934-6

Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr., Associate Professor of History; Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences
Columbia University, New York

For most of the first half of the twentieth century, tuberculosis ranked among the top three causes of mortality among urban African Americans. Often afflicting an entire family or large segments of a neighborhood, the plague of TB was as mysterious as it was fatal. Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr. examines how individuals and institutions—black and white, public and private—responded to the challenges of tuberculosis in a segregated society.

Reactionary white politicians and health officials promoted “racial hygiene” and sought to control TB through Jim Crow quarantines, Roberts explains. African Americans, in turn, protested the segregated, overcrowded housing that was the true root of the tuberculosis problem. Moderate white and black political leadership reconfigured definitions of health and citizenship, extending some rights while constraining others. Meanwhile, those who suffered with the disease—as its victims or as family and neighbors—made the daily adjustments required by the devastating effects of the “white plague.”

Exploring the politics of race, reform, and public health, Infectious Fear uses the tuberculosis crisis to illuminate the limits of racialized medicine and the roots of modern health disparities. Ultimately, it reveals a disturbing picture of the United States’ health history while offering a vision of a more democratic future.

People from Mexico show stunning amount of genetic diversity

Science
2014-06-12

Lizzie Wade, Latin America Correspondent

Imagine if people from Kansas and California were as genetically distinct from each other as someone from Germany is from someone from Japan. That’s the kind of remarkable genetic variation that scientists have now found within Mexico, thanks to the first fine-scale study of human genetic variation in that country. This local diversity could help researchers trace the history of the country’s different indigenous populations and help them develop better diagnostic tools and medical treatments for people of Mexican descent living all over the world.

The team has done a “tremendous job” of creating a “blueprint of all the genetic diversity in Mexico,” says Bogdan Pasaniuc, a population geneticist at the University of California (UC), Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research…

…When the team analyzed the genomes of 511 indigenous individuals from all over Mexico, they found a striking amount of genetic diversity. The most divergent indigenous groups in Mexico are as different from each other as Europeans are from East Asians, they report online today in Science. This diversity maps onto the geography of Mexico itself. The farther away ethnic groups live from each other, the more different their genomes turn out to be.

But most people in Mexico or of Mexican descent these days are not indigenous but rather mestizo, meaning they have a mixture of indigenous, European, and African ancestry. Do their genomes also vary by what region of Mexico they come from, or has all that local variation been smoothed out by centuries of different groups meeting, mixing, and having babies?…

Read the entire article here.

Self-reported pigmentary phenotypes and race are significant but incomplete predictors of Fitzpatrick skin phototype in an ethnically diverse population

Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
Available online: 2014-06-11
DOI: 10.1016/j.jaad.2014.05.023

Steven Y. He, BS
Department of Dermatology
University of California, San Francisco

Charles E. McCulloch, PhD
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
University of California, San Francisco

W. John Boscardin, PhD
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Department of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco

Mary-Margaret Chren, MD
Department of Dermatology
University of California, San Francisco

Eleni Linos, MD, MPH, DrPH
Department of Dermatology
University of California, San Francisco

Sarah T. Arron, MD, PhD
Department of Dermatology
University of California, San Francisco

Background

Fitzpatrick skin phototype (FSPT) is the most common method used to assess sunburn risk and is an independent predictor of skin cancer risk. Because of a conventional assumption that FSPT is predictable based on pigmentary phenotypes, physicians frequently estimate FSPT based on patient appearance.

Objective

We sought to determine the degree to which self-reported race and pigmentary phenotypes are predictive of FSPT in a large, ethnically diverse population.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey collected responses from 3386 individuals regarding self-reported FSPT, pigmentary phenotypes, race, age, and sex. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to determine variables that significantly predict FSPT.

Results

Race, sex, skin color, eye color, and hair color are significant but weak independent predictors of FSPT (P < .0001). A multivariate model constructed using all independent predictors of FSPT only accurately predicted FSPT to within 1 point on the Fitzpatrick scale with 92% accuracy (weighted kappa statistic 0.53).

Limitations

Our study enriched for responses from ethnic minorities and does not fully represent the demographics of the US population.

Conclusions

Patient self-reported race and pigmentary phenotypes are inaccurate predictors of sun sensitivity as defined by FSPT. There are limitations to using patient-reported race and appearance in predicting individual sunburn risk.

Read or purchase the article here.

Race: A Starting Place

Virtual Mentor: American Medical Association Journal of Ethics
Volume 16, Number 6 (June 2014)
pages 472-478

Brooke A. Cunningham, MD, PhD

Health status, access to and quality of care, and numerous social factors associated with health vary across racial groups. Many applaud the collection and use of race data to identify and monitor progress in addressing health disparities. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) requires and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends the collection of race data in clinical research; the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provided financial incentives for health systems to collect race information through the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Program (i.e., “meaningful use” of electronic health records); and the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandated that the Department of Health and Human Services establish standards for race and ethnicity data collection. Yet, in the face of increasing amounts of “race data,” we have created few opportunities for discussing “what race measures.” Some journals require authors to explain how race is conceptualized and collected in their studies, but the requirement is not standardized and rarely met. Thus, race and racial data are frequently interpreted in conflicting ways. This article seeks to provide an overview of race as a foundation for an improved understanding of the relationship between race and health.

Many challenges await those who wish to consider the role of race in health outcomes critically. Careful consideration of race requires identifying and setting aside much tacit knowledge about race—those ideas that come easily, are taken for granted, and simply seem right. Although “race…appears obvious, intuitive, and in need of no special knowledge to discuss or analyze…[u]sing race in biomedical contexts requires great care and expertise”. Such an approach is difficult because from childhood we learn the ways that racial groups are supposed to differ from one another. Frequently the lesson has been that differences between the races are intrinsic or inherited, and those beliefs have justified discrimination against members of racial minority groups. Finally, it seems that, to many, newer understandings of race that have emerged from the social sciences seem less scientific, less reliable, and more political than the biological or genetic explanations that they seek to unseat…

…Racial categories vary across the world. Thus, identical twins separated and raised in different countries could end up identifying their race differently. Similarly, were we able to send a person back through time, his or her race might change. Social scientists point to this variation in racial categories across time and space to argue that race is a social construct. Further support for the fluidity of race also comes from recent studies that show that some people report membership in different races at different times in their lives. The race that one selects often depends upon one’s current social position…

Read the entire article here in HTML or PDF format.

The Color Of Health: Skin Color, Ethnoracial Classification, And Discrimination In The Health Of Latin Americans

Social Science & Medicine
Available online: 2014-06-01
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.05.054

Krista M. Perreira, Professor of Public Policy and Associate Dean Office for Undergraduate Research
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Edward E. Telles, Professor of Sociology
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Highlights

• Uses newly collected data on 4921 adults from Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, and Peru
• Examines multiple measures of race/ethnicity and their associations with health
• Finds significant skin-color gradients in self-reported health.
• Finds significant skin-color gradients in class-based discrimination and low SES.
• SES and class-based discrimination largely account for disparities in health by skin color.

Latin America is one of the most ethnoracially heterogeneous regions of the world. Despite this, health disparities research in Latin America tends to focus on gender, class and regional health differences while downplaying ethnoracial differences. Few scholars have conducted studies of ethnoracial identification and health disparities in Latin America. Research that examines multiple measures of ethnoracial identification is rarer still. Official data on race/ethnicity in Latin America are based on self-identification which can differ from interviewer-ascribed or phenotypic classification based on skin color. We use data from Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, and Peru to examine associations of interviewer-ascribed skin color, interviewer-ascribed race/ethnicity, and self-reported race/ethnicity with self-rated health among Latin American adults (ages 18-65). We also examine associations of observer-ascribed skin color with three additional correlates of health – skin color discrimination, class discrimination, and socio-economic status. We find a significant gradient in self-rated health by skin color. Those with darker skin colors report poorer health. Darker skin color influences self-rated health primarily by increasing exposure to class discrimination and low socio-economic status.

Read or purchase the article here.

Things to Know When Talking About Race and Genetics

Psychology Today
2014-05-13

Agustín Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology
University of Notre Dame

On May 5th, 2014, I shared the platform in a webinar debate with Nicholas Wade (former NYTimes Science Writer) about his new book “A Troublesome Inheritance – A discussion on genes, race and human history.” The debate was sponsored by the American Anthropological Association.

Wade’s assertions in the book (and our discussion) are that Humans are divided into genetically identified “continental races” and that there are significant differences in genetically based social behaviors between these “races” as a result of the last 50,000 years of human evolution.

Wade argues that social scientists are covering up these ideas and claims that a true discussion on race is repressed by most academics out of political correctness. These points were also made by Charles Murray in a laudatory review of Wade’s book in the Wall Street Journal. They are both wrong.

I am an academic and I love to talk about the data on race, so do many of my colleagues. The scientific data on human genetic variation and human evolution refute the claims there are multiple biological races in humans today and in the debate I offered articles, datasets, and work by biologists, geneticists, evolutionary theorists and even anthropologists to demonstrate this. Unfortunately, in such discussions the bulk of data, and its complexity, are too often ignored.

Avoiding direct challenge is a common tactic by people trying to use select slices of genetic data to “prove” that there are multiple biological races in humans today. This is a problem because dialogue on such an important topic should be encouraged and as open minded as possible, but it must also be accurately informed by the science of human biology. So here is a mini-primer on what we what we know about human genetics to help such a discussion (see the bibliography at the bottom of this post for very good articles on the topic)…

…5) Nearly all the genetic variation in our entire species is found in populations just in Africa, with most of the variation found in all populations outside of Africa making up a small subset of that variation…

…Given these facts, here is the key argument you need to remember: While different populations vary in some of the .1% of the genome, the way this variation is distributed does not map to biological races, either by continent or otherwise.

For example, when you compare people from Nigeria, Western Europe and Beijing you do get some patterned differences…but these specific groups do not reflect the entire continental areas of Africa, Europe, and Asia (the proposed “continental races” of African, Caucasian and Asian). There are no genetic patterns that link all populations in just Africa, just Asia or just Europe to one another to the exclusion of other populations in other places. If you compare geographically separated populations within the “continental” areas you get the same kind of variation as you would between them. Comparing Nigerians to Western Europeans to people from Beijing gives us the same kind of differences in variation patterns as does comparing people from Siberia, Tibet and Java, or from Finland, Wales and Yemen, or even Somalia, Liberia and South Africa— and none of these comparisons demonstrates “races.”…

Read the entire article here.

Is Race/Ethnicity Related to Presence or Severity of Pain in Colorectal and Lung Cancer?

Journal of Pain and Symptom Management
Published online: 2014-04-18
DOI: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2014.02.005

Kathryn A. Martinez, PhD, MPH, Postdoctoral Fellow
CanSORT (Cancer Surveillance & Outcomes Research Team)
Ann Arbor VA Health Services Research & Development Center,
University of Michgan, Ann Arbor

Claire F. Snyder, PhD, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine
Johns Hopkins Univesity Shchool of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryand

Jennifer L. Malin, MD, PhD
Wellpoint, Thousand Oaks, Calfornia; Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles

Sydney M. Dy, MD, MSc, Physician Leader, Duffey Pain and Palliative Care Program, Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center; Associate Professor
Deparmemt of Health Management and Policy
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Context

Developing interventions to address racial/ethnic cancer pain disparities requires exploration of the role of socioeconomic status, health status, and pain severity from the time of diagnosis.

Objectives

To examine patterns of disparities in cancer pain by evaluating differences by race/ethnicity in the odds of reporting pain and in pain severity, controlling for key patient-level covariates.

Methods

This study used data from a nationally representative cohort of colorectal and lung cancer patients. Multivariable logistic regression was conducted to examine the relationship between race/ethnicity and reporting pain. Multivariable linear regression was then conducted, among those who reported pain, to determine differences in pain severity by race/ethnicity.

Results

The cohort included 5,761 individuals (14% black, 7% Hispanic/Latino, 6% Asian or Pacific Islander, and 3% multiracial) among whom 48% reported pain. The adjusted odds of reporting differed only for multiracial patients, who were more likely to report pain than whites (OR:1.54; p=0.036). However, among those with pain, severity was higher for black patients (β=6.6; p≤0.001) and multiracial patients (β=4.5; p=0.036) relative to white patients. Lower educational attainment, depressed affect, and lower levels of wealth were also associated with higher pain severity.

Conclusion

While the odds of experiencing pain differed only for multiracial patients, among those reporting pain, both blacks and multiracial individuals reported higher pain severity than whites. Sociodemographic status, health status, and depression were associated with severity but did not explain the disparity. Interventions to address these disparities will need to address reported severity as well as patient-level factors.

Read or purchase the article here.

Abuse of Modernity: Japanese Biological Determinism and Identity Management in Colonial Korea

Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review
Number 10, March 2014
26 pages

Mark Caprio
Rikkyo University, Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Japan

Medical researcher Kubo Takeshi’s contributions to professional publications, such as Chōsen igakkai zasshi (The Korean medical journal), and more popular magazines, such as Chōsen oyobi Manshū (Korea and Manchuria), reflected many of the prejudicial attitudes that Japanese held toward Koreans during the first decade of colonial rule. His scholarship was based on biological determinist thinking, an approach developed by eighteenth-century European medical researchers to establish race, class, and gender hierarchies. For Kubo this approach provided a means for exploiting scientific inquiry to establish and manage Japanese superiority over Korean subjects in a more stable manner than one based on more malleable cultural differences. A people could adjust its customs or mannerisms to amalgamate with a suzerain culture but could not do so with hereditarily determined features, such as blood type or cranium size, shape, or weight. Practitioners, however, often linked the physical with the cultural by arguing that a people’s physical structure was a product of its cultural heritage. The subjectivity injected into this seemingly objective research methodology abused the lay community’s blind trust in modern science in two ways. First, it employed this inquiry to verify biased observations, rather than to uncover new truths; second, it altered the approach, rather than the conclusions, when this inquiry demonstrated the desired truths to be inaccurate. Biological determinism proved useful in substantiating a Japanese-Korean colonial relationship that acknowledged historically similar origins while arguing for the historically different evolutions of the two peoples.

Read the entire article here.

Race

Radiolab
Season 5, Episode 3, April 2014

Shea Walsh

This hour of Radiolab, a look at race.

When the human genome was first fully mapped in 2000, Bill Clinton, Craig Venter, and Francis Collins took the stage and pronounced that “The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis.” Great words spoken with great intentions. But what do they really mean, and where do they leave us? Our genes are nearly all the same, but that hasn’t made race meaningless, or wiped out our evolving conversation about it.

Guests: Ali Abbas, Dr. Jay Cohn, Richard Cooper, Troy Duster, Tony Frudakis, Malcolm Gladwell, Nell Greenfieldboyce, Wayne Joseph and David Sherrin