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

Braun, Lundy

Fausto-Sterling, Anne

Fullwiley, Duana

Hammonds, Evelynn M

Nelson, Alondra

Quivers, William

Reverby, Susan M

Shields, Alexandra E

PLoS Medicine

English

PubMed

This Perspective discusses the

following new Essay published in

PLoS

Medicine:

Braun L, Fausto-Sterling A, Fullwiley

D, Hammonds EM, Nelson A, et al. (2007)

Racial categories in medical practice:

How useful are they? PLoS Med 4(9):

e271. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040271

In this Essay, the authors address the

question of whether it is good medical

practice for physicians to “eyeball” a

patient’s race when assessing their

medical status

Ellison, George T. H

Smart, Andrew

Tutton, Richard

Outram, Simon M

Ashcroft, Richard

Martin, Paul

Victoria University Institutional Repository (VUIR)

Racial categories in medical practice: a failure of evidence-based practice?

African and African American StudiesAnthropolog

Hammonds, Evelynn M.

Shields, Alexandra E.

Reverby, Susan M.

Harvard University - DASH 

Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They?

Sorting patients by race may seem useful during a time-constrained interview, but we argue that acting on rapid racial assessment can lead to missed diagnoses and inappropriate treatments. Both historical evidence and
contemporary genetic research suggest that “racial profiling” in medicine can lead to serious medical errors. Assessing risk through race is more problematic than its typical depiction in the media and in scholarly literatur

Columbia University Academic Commons

http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3008241/Braun_RacialCategoriesMedicalPractice.pdf?sequence=2

Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They?

Abstract

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Victoria University Institutional Repository (VUIR)

Harvard University - DASH

Columbia University Academic Commons