‘Race is not biological, it’s a social construct’: Scientists say ethnicity does NOT determine health risks – and doctors who say so are just fueling ‘racial prejudice’

Posted in Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive on 2019-02-19 14:24Z by Steven

‘Race is not biological, it’s a social construct’: Scientists say ethnicity does NOT determine health risks – and doctors who say so are just fueling ‘racial prejudice’

The Daily Mail
2019-02-16

Mia De Graaf, Health Editor
Washington, D.C.


Researchers presented papers at a conference this week on race and genetics. This graph, presented by Brian Donovan at BSCS Science Learning says we often see race as disparate circles in a Venn diagram. Actually, he and other say, it’s more like circles on top of each other.
  • New research adds fuel to the firey debate about race and genetics
  • Experts told a conference we should not use race as a risk factor for health
  • They say differences between racial groups are minimal and differences within groups are huge

Race is not a legitimate category to use in medicine, top scientists declared at the world’s biggest science conference this week.

In the US, African Americans are told to watch out for hypertension, white people for multiple sclerosis, Asians for heart disease, Hispanics for diabetes, and so on.

But on Friday, leading biologists said those general warnings are based on ‘bad science’ and do no more than fuel ‘racial prejudice’.

Among them, anthropologist Keith Hunley of the University of New Mexico presented a new map of genomes around the world, finding few differences between the clusters of racial groups that are often cited in medical research.

By lumping people into distinct broad categories, he and others warned, we risk ‘hyping’ certain inherited health risks for some and underestimating them for others – while sewing division, stereotypes and ignorance within society…

‘We have this notion that there are variants that are unique to certain groups, that there are genes that are unique to certain groups. And that’s almost never the case,’ Dr Hunley said as he described his presented his paper at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference…

Read the entire article here.

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Study investigates whether blind people characterize others by race

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Social Science on 2015-08-26 23:49Z by Steven

Study investigates whether blind people characterize others by race

EurekAlert! The Global Source for Science News
American Association for the Advancement of Science
2015-08-25

American Sociological Association

CHICAGO — Most people who meet a new acquaintance, or merely pass someone on the street, need only a glance to categorize that person as a particular race. But, sociologist Asia Friedman wondered, what can we learn about that automatic visual processing from people who are unable to see?

Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Delaware, set out to explore that question by interviewing 25 individuals who are blind. She will present her findings in a study at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

“The visual process of assigning race is instantaneous, and it’s an example of automatic thinking — it happens below the level of awareness,” Friedman said. “With blind people, the process is much slower as they piece together information about a person over time. Their thinking is deliberative rather than automatic, and even after they’ve categorized someone by race, they’re often not certain that they’re correct.”

In fact, she said, blind people categorize many fewer people by race than do sighted people, who assign a race to virtually everyone they see. For those who are blind, the slower process of assigning race generally takes place only when they have extensive interactions with a person, not with passersby or during casual encounters…

Read the entire press release here.

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