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The Troubling Persistence of Race in Pharmacogenomics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Jonathan Kahn
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Extract

In 1878, Friedrich Engels famously wrote that on the road to realizing the communist utopia, “the state is not abolished, it withers away.” In a similar manner, biomedical researchers telling us that come the promised land of individualized genomic medicine, the need for using race will also “wither away” in the face of scientific progress. Such millennial hopes are, no doubt, sincere, but they enable the continued casual proliferation of racial categories throughout biomedical research, product development, marketing, and clinical practice. My contrasting quotation to frame this article is drawn from the 20th century pioneer of rock and roll, Buddy Holly (né Charles Hardin Holley) whose 1957 hit “Not Fade Away” begins with the line, “I’m gonna tell you how it's gonna be” — the point being that far from withering away, race is persisting even as genomic milestones are being reached and passed.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , Winter 2012 , pp. 873 - 885
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2012

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