ABSTRACT
With the first patent being granted on 15 October 2002 for a medication(BiDil) deemed to be most effective for a specific ‘race’, African Americans, for a specific form of heart failure, the ongoing debate about the effect of the older category of ‘race’ has been revitalized.1 What role should race play in the discussion of the genetic make-up of populations today? The new genetics seems to make ‘race’ a category that is useful if not necessary, as the New York Times noted recently: ‘Race-based prescribing makes sense only as a temporary measure.’2 Should one think about ‘race’ as a transitional category that is of some use while we continue to explore the actual genetic make-up of and relationships in populations? Or is such a transitional solution poisoning the actual research and practice? Given the recent breakthrough in mapping genetic variation with potential attention to pathologies (the International HapMap project) among peoples across wide geographic areas (China, Japan, Nigeria and the United States), the idea that
‘race’ is helpful in the understanding and treatment of common disorders such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes is truly suspect.3 Charles Rotimi, a
professor in the College of Medicine at Howard University, one of the universities that sponsors the mapping project, said that the results supported scientists’ understanding of genetic variation as continuous across populations, not sharply divided into racial categories.4
