{"id":40490,"date":"2015-03-17T15:19:06","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T15:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40490"},"modified":"2016-05-21T23:07:15","modified_gmt":"2016-05-21T23:07:15","slug":"a-reconsideration-of-the-role-of-self-identified-races-in-epidemiology-and-biomedical-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40490","title":{"rendered":"A reconsideration of the role of self-identified races in epidemiology and biomedical research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S1369848615000345\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>A reconsideration of the role of self-identified races in epidemiology and biomedical research<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/journal\/13698486\" target=\"_blank\">Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences<\/a><br \/>\nAvailable online: 2015-03-16<br \/>\nDOI: 10.1016\/j.shpsc.2015.02.004<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/uniss.academia.edu\/LudovicaLorusso\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Ludovica Lorusso<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\nDepartment of Political Science, Communication, Engineering and Information Technologies<br \/>\n<em>University of Sassari, Italy<\/em><br \/>\nDepartment of Philosophy<br \/>\n<em>University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fabio Bacchini<\/strong><br \/>\nLaboratory of Applied Epistemology, DADU<br \/>\n<em>University of Sassari, Italy<\/em><br \/>\nDepartment of Philosophy<br \/>\n<em>Stanford University, Palo Alto, California<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Highlights<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We explore the role of race in biomedicine and epidemiology.<\/li>\n<li>We reject the use of race as a proxy for a genetic component to a complex disease risk.<\/li>\n<li>Self-identified race and exposomic and epigenomic variation tend to match each other.<\/li>\n<li>Self-identified race captures the effects of present and past racism on people&#8217;s health.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A considerable number of studies in epidemiology and biomedicine investigate the etiology of complex diseases by considering (self-identified) race as a relevant variable and focusing on the differences in risk among racial groups in the United States; they extensively draw on a genetic hypothesis\u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Viz.\" target=\"_blank\">viz<\/a>. the hypothesis that differences in the risk of complex diseases among racial groups are largely due to genetic differences covarying with genetic ancestry\u2014that appears highly problematic in the light of both current biological evidence and the theory of human genome evolution. Is this reason for dismissing self-identified races? No. An alternative promising use of self-identified races exists, and ironically is suggested by those studies that investigate the etiology of complex diseases without focusing on racial differences. These studies provide a large amount of empirical evidence supporting the primacy of the contribution of non-genetic as opposed to genetic factors to the risk of complex diseases. We show that differences in race\u2014or, better, in racial self-identification\u2014may be critically used as proxies for differences in risk-related exposomes and epigenomes in the context of the United States. Self-identified race is what we need to capture the complexity of the effects of present and past racism on people&#8217;s health and investigate risk-related external and internal exposures, gene\u2013environment interactions, and epigenetic events. In fact patterns of racial self-identifications on one side, and patterns of risk-related exposomes and epigenomes on the other side, constantly coevolve and tend to match each other. However, there is no guarantee that using self-identified races in epidemiology and biomedical research will be beneficial all things considered: special attention must be paid at balancing positive and negative consequences.<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S1369848615000345\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A reconsideration of the role of self-identified races in epidemiology and biomedical research Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences Available online: 2015-03-16 DOI: 10.1016\/j.shpsc.2015.02.004 Ludovica Lorusso Department of Political Science, Communication, Engineering and Information Technologies University of Sassari, Italy Department of Philosophy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,8,20],"tags":[19646,19645,19647],"class_list":["post-40490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-fabio-bacchini","tag-ludovica-lorusso","tag-studies-in-history-and-philosophy-of-science-part-c-studies-in-history-and-philosophy-of-biological-and-biomedical-sciences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47054,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40490\/revisions\/47054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}