Can DNA ‘Witness’ Race?: Forensic Uses of an Imperfect Ancestry Testing Technology

African and African American StudiesAnthropolog

Race and Genetics: Attempts to Define the Relationship

Many researchers working in the field of human genetics in the United States have been caught between two seemingly competing messages with regard to racial categories and genetic difference. As the human genome was mapped in 2000, Francis Collins, the head of the publicly funded project, together with his privately funded rival, announced that humans were 99.9 percent the same at the level of their genome. That same year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began a research program on pharmacogenetics that would exploit the .01 percent of human genetic difference, increasingly understood in racial terms, to advance the field of pharmacy. First, this article addresses Collins’ summary of what he called the ‘vigorous debate’ on the relationship between race and genetics in the open-access special issue of Nature Genetics entitled ‘Genetics for the Human Race’ in 2004. Second, it examines the most vexed (if not always openly stated) issue at stake in the debate: that many geneticists today work with the assumption that human biology differs by race as it is conceived through American census categories. It then presents interviews with researchers in two collaborating US laboratories who collect and organize DNA by American notions of ‘race/ethnicity’ and assume that US race categories of classification largely traduce human biogenetic difference. It concludes that race is a practical and conceptual tool whose utility and function is often taken for granted rather than rigorously assessed and that ‘rational medicine’ cannot precede a rational approach to addressing the nature of racial disparities, difference and inequality in health and society more broadly.African and African American StudiesAnthropolog

Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They?

Is it good medical practice for physicians to "eyeball" a patient's race when assessing their medical status or even to ask them to identify their race

Response to "The Legitimacy of Genetic Ancestry Tests"

Anthropolog

The Biologistical Construction of Race: "Admixture" Technology and the New Genetic Medicine

This paper presents an ethnographic case study of the use of race in two interconnected laboratories of medical genetics. Specifically, it examines how researchers committed to reducing health disparities in Latinos with asthma advance hypotheses and structure research to show that relative frequencies of genetic markers characterize commonly understood groupings of race. They do this first by unapologetically advancing the idea that peoples whom they take to be of the 'Old World', or ;'Africans', 'Europeans', 'East Asians', and 'Native Americans', can serve as putatively pure reference populations against which genetic risk for common diseases such as asthma can be calculated for those in the 'New World'. Technologically, they deploy a tool called ancestry informative markers (AIMs), which are a collection of genetic sequence variants said to differ in present-day West Africans, East Asians, Europeans, and (ideally Pre-Columbian) Native Americans. I argue that this technology, compelling as it may be to a range of actors who span the political spectrum, is, at base, designed to bring about a correspondence of familiar ideas of race and supposed socially neutral DNA. This correspondence happens, in part, as the scientists in question often bracket the environment while privileging racialized genetic variance as the primary source of health disparities for common disease, in this case between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans with asthma. With their various collaborators, these scientists represent a growing movement within medical genetics to re-consider race and 'racial admixture' as biogenetically valid points of departure. Furthermore, many actors at the center of this ethnography focus on race as a function of their personal identity politics as scientists of color. This to say, they are driven not by racist notions of human difference, but by a commitment to reduce health disparities and to include 'their' communities in what they describe as the 'genetic revolution'.African and African American StudiesAnthropolog

The song of power: A fugue of dystopia and racial regeneration

In this paper I take the form of the fugue in music to query a contemporary dynamic. It is one where hopefulness entwines with worrisome, oppressive realities that pervade biosocial trends concerning race. Genetic ancestry testing, forensic uses of DNA, and President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative are all examined as aspects of this cultural moment where biosociality must be engaged for its potential contradictory outcomes, which I argue are regenerative in form, yet often dystopian

Discriminate Biopower and Everyday Biopolitics: Views on Sickle Cell Testing in Dakar

Many physicians in Senegal and France, where most Senegalese sickle cell specialists are partially trained, assume that genetic testing that could imply selective abortion for people with sickle cell would run counter to the religious and cultural ethics of people living in Dakar. Senegalese affected by this genetic disease, however, often cite ‘‘traditional’’ rationales to indicate why such testing, if offered, might appeal to them. The reluctance of medical practitioners to entertain such testing technologies for their patients evinces a protectionist attitude toward care—an attitude that emerges within a context in which family planning and a blind concentration on HIV=AIDS have created a public health system that completely overlooks sickle cell anemia. This discriminate biopower leaves everyday biopolitics largely in the hands of families faced with this disease. It falls to them to pragmatically calculate the value that genetic testing may, or may not, hold for their own lives.African and African American StudiesAnthropolog

Out from under the Skin: Disease Etiology, Biology and Society: A Commentary on Aronowitz

African and African American StudiesAnthropolog

Race, biologie et maladie : la difficile organisation des patients atteints de drépanocytose aux États-Unis

Race, biology and illness: the difficulty for patients suffering from sickle cell disease to organize themselves in the US Sickle cell anemia, the first disease located at the molecular level in 1949, has long been understood as particular to african-americans. By examining the history of sickle cell disease in the US, this paper demonstrates the scientific and social production of sickle cell as a « black person's disease ». The multiple processes of group construction and identification which take race and disease into account will be examined. The interplay of race, biology, and disease in the case of individual african-americans who are not part of larger patient organizations can help to explain the experience of sickle cell as an element of a « minority's » reality in a society where differences made visible have resulted in discrimination of various forms.Résumé. La drépanocytose, la première maladie génétique à avoir été localisée au niveau moléculaire, a pendant longtemps été perçue, aux États-Unis, comme une « maladie de noirs » circonscrite aux africains-américains. À travers l'histoire américaine, sociale et scientifique, de la drépanocytose, cet article souligne le rôle joué conjointement par la race et la maladie dans la construction et dans l'identification du groupe des patients. Les interactions entre race, biologie et maladie contribuent à expliquer comment l'expérience de la drépanocytose est devenue un élément constitutif d'une minorité dans une société où les différences alimentent des pratiques discriminatoires. L'article explique ainsi pourquoi les africains-américains atteints de drépanocytose ne sont pas activement engagés dans des associations de malades.Raza, biología y enfermedad : la difícil organización de los pacientes afectados por la drepanocitosis en los Estados Unidos La drepanocitosis, primera enfermedad genética que ha sido localizada a nivel molecular, fue percibida durante mucho tiempo en los Estados Unidos como una « enfermedad de negros », circunscnta a los afro-americanos. A través de la historia social y cientifica de la drepanocitosis en los Estados Unidos, este artículo subraya el papel jugado conjuntamente por la pza y la enfermedad en la construcción y en la identificación del grupo de pacientes. Las interacciones entre raza, biología y enfermedad contribuyen a explicar de que manera la experiencia de la drepanocitosis se ha convertido en un elemento constitutivo de una minoría en una sociedad donde las diferencias alimentan las prácticas descriminatorias. El artículo explica porque los afro-americanos afectados por la drepanocitosis no están activamente implicados en las asociaciones de pacientes.Fullwiley Duana. Race, biologie et maladie : la difficile organisation des patients atteints de drépanocytose aux États-Unis. In: Sciences sociales et santé. Volume 16, n°3, 1998. Les associations de malades : entre le marché, la science et la médecine, sous la direction de Doris Bonnet, Gérard de Pouvourville, Michel Callon et Vololona Rabeharisoa. pp. 129-158