Now is the Time for a Postracial Medicine: Biomedical Research, the National Institutes of Health, and the Perpetuation of Scientific Racism

Abstract

The consideration of racial differences in the biology of disease and treatment options is a hallmark of modern medicine. However, this time-honored medical tradition has no scientific basis, and the premise itself, that is, the existence of biological differences between the commonly known races, is false inasmuch as races are only sociocultural constructions. It is time to rid medical research of the highly damaging exercise of searching for supposed racial differences in the biological manifestations of disease. The practice not only condoned but required by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of utilizing racial identification as a demographic characteristic with assumed biological implications is at best badly flawed, and at worst unintentionally contributes to perpetuating the fallacy of natural differences between persons of different skin color, which has been used in the past to advance the cause of racial discrimination.

Keywords:

• biomedical research
• health policy
• medical humanities
• public health
• race and culture/ethnicity

This article is referred to by:

Postracial Fantasies and the Reproduction of Scientific Racism

A Call for Critical, Antiracist Medicine: Response to Open Peer Commentaries

Social Meaning and the Unintended Consequences of Inclusion

Race in the Postgenomic Era: Social Epigenetics Calling for Interdisciplinary Ethical Safeguards

The Practical Implications of the New Metaphysics of Race for a Postracial Medicine: Biomedical Research Methodology, Institutional Requirements, Patient–Physician Relations

Science Is Complex—So Is Race

Systemic Racism and “Race” Categorization in U.S. Medical Research and Practice

Reforming the Use of Race in Medical Pedagogy

There's No Such Thing as Postracial Medicine

Not By Proxy: Arguments for Improving the Use of Race in Biomedical Research

Conflicts of Interest

Alejandro de la Fuente, PhD has taught a class on Scientific Racism cited in the article and earns his salary as the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics at Harvard University and as the director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the same institution.