I have heard it said that there is no scientific basis for the concept of race, but these results seem to indicatate otherwise.
Heart failure drug for blacks expected to become first pill sold for a specific race by Marilynn Marchione AP
How did this study identify “blacks”?
I would guess they asked for volunteers who self-identified as black, and may have done some further screening.
There is a scientific basis of some sort for ‘race’, in that skin color is determined genetically. Only those properties of ‘race’ that can be determined genetically have any scientific basis, and it is widely agreed that there is as much genetic variation within any given population than between human populaions. (But it’s acceptable to say, for example, that all members of a given population might have certain genes, such as a gene for skin color.)
The idea that there is no scientific basis for race refers to cultural aspects of race, not to genetic properties. Stereotyped descriptions about ways members of a given race act, as opposed to physical traits determined by genes, have no scientific basis.
The conclusion being made by the study is that the drug is useful for treating a condition which occurs more often in blacks than in others. It is probably true that not all members of this population have the genes that lead to lower levels of nitric oxide, and there may be members of other populations that also have lower levels. Remember that this is a purely genetic observation, and there are many genes (or versions of genes) that are more common in some populations than others. There are genetic conditions which are far more common in whites or in other populations than in blacks.
However, I would think that further studies should be done on this drug to determine if it might work on other groups. It is illogical to think that the condition described is unique to blacks, and even if it is more likely to be helpful in this group, there are almost certainly members of other populations that could benefit – whites (and Asians and so on) who respond poorly to ACE inhibitors, for example.
You can get other medical issues that affect one given “race” far more than others. Sickle Cell Anemia is one such long known affliction. It is far more common in the African American community than any other (hispanics I think are also able to have it). Sickle Cell Anemia is a genetic disorder that seems to have evolved mostly in populations from sub-Saharan Africa. It seems that the trait proliferated there as those with the trait were more likely to survive malaria outbreaks.
::: sigh :::
The study reported provides the flip side of the study done a couple of years ago that showed that the effects of some drugs appeared to be less helpful to blacks than whites. However, when that study was published, it was noted that even better correlation of results could be computed if the test subjects were aligned according to realtive health and economic status (that just happened to follow rough “racial” lines). It would appear that this group took the original results of the first study (without the corrective) and specifically developed a drug to treat heart patients on the grounds that the other one did poorly among “blacks.”
There is nothing wrong with this, per se, but as noted in the article, whites were excluded from the study, meaning we have no basis of comparison for this drug based on “race.”
It is, of course, possible that this new drug will have better efficacy among black Americans than among white Americans. Before we could draw a “racial” conclusion from that, however, we would have to test the drug against a much wider population. Blacks in America do not tend to be representative of “blacks” as a race, having been selected from a very few local populations in Africa and then mixed with (primarily Anglo-Saxon or Celtic) whites and American Indians after their importation to this continent. They are, therefore, a separate population from some vague characterization of a “black race.”
The comment regarding Sickle Cell demonstrates part of this problem. There are two general mutations that can be described as a “sickle cell” problem. One is endemic to Africa and to the Mediterranean basin, matching very closely to the the presence of endemic malaria in a region. A second variety extends across the Middle East, India, and on toward Burma. That variety is also tied closely to regions of endemic malaria. We can establish a much higher correspondence of sickle cell to any population by discovering whether a person’s ancestors lived in a malarial region than we can by looking at purported race.
It just happens that the overwhelming number of blacks imported to North America were taken from one of the specific regions of Africa where malaria and sickle cell are endemic, so we get a false view, when looking at black Americans, that sickle cell is “racial” rather than “malarial.”
The short answer is this: The study didn’t identify blacks. It identified people for whom the drug would work, and there was overlap between that population and the group of people known as blacks to our way of thinking.
Race is a terrible word because it means precisely zip. Or it means two completely different things, and you never know which is being discussed until the person using it brings up a point from one side or the other.
Race can either mean:
[ul]
[li]The genetic differences between groups of historically seperated populations. This is a valid field of study, as the news about the pill shows: We can identify real physiological differences between different groups of people and tailor treatments to them. But you can’t describe each population as a race, really, and be understood, because the populations that actually exist cross racial lines and, if they don’t, only exist as a small subset of a race. For example, the population susceptible to Tay-Sachs doesn’t encompass most, or even many, Jews, and some non-Jews have inherited the disease as well.[/li][li]The idea that cultural differences between historically seperated populations are genetic in origin. This is utter bunk, but it will use the findings from the first field of research to bolster its nonsense. In this case, the classifications of race are just as vague and usually reflect political prejudice more than genetic or even cultural. Lots and lots of losers have bought into this crap through history, and I don’t have the time or patience to give even a brief rundown here.[/li][/ul]
The problem common to both methods is that races aren’t well-defined. They try to be too all-encompassing while leaving out groups that are `inconvenient’ to the person making the boundaries, and seem to be political as much as they are genetic especially when the populations look the same. In reality, there’s been so much genetic mixing worldwide that finding a pure example of any race is impossible.
keno,
I’ve replaced your quoted material by a link to the article. We allow brief (~10%) quotes from copyrighted articles and you are allowed to re-phrase the article in your own words, but you quoted way too much.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
It is worth mentioning that although hypertension is more common in American blacks than it is in whites, that does not hold true for the source populations in Africa, particularly in rural areas. Therefore this difference may have little to do with “race” per se.
From here