Race and the personalized medicine debate

The Washington Post: Race Reemerges In Debate Over 'Personalized Medicine'
Federal examiners have rejected patents for genetic screening tests because the applicants did not explore their effectiveness for different races, adding to the debate about whether race has scientific validity in modern DNA-based medicine. Some geneticists, sociologists and bioethicists argue that "black," "white," "Asian" and "Hispanic" are antiquated categories that threaten to revive prejudices. Others, however, say that meaningful DNA variations can track racial lines and that ignoring them could deny many benefits of "personalized medicine," which aims to develop tests and treatments tailored to a person's genetic makeup (Stein, 7/31).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.