Race And Ethnicity In Health Care

The use of racial or ethnical categories in medical research is a current debate in the scientific community. This debate was brought on by the Human Genome Project, which mapped all of the DNA building blocks in the human genome (Scherer, 2006). Those who are in favor of race being reported in research use the argument that categorizing by race improves the quality of care that is received by the patient (Ossario & Duster, January 2005). By categorizing people, it is easier to identify where the disparities are occurring within the health care system. While appears beneficial to the patient on the surface, the opposite effect seems to be occurring throughout medicine. Race is a social construct that is not biologically real. The nonstandard

Race and ethnicity should not be used in the health care system because people are genetically similar on the levels that concern health and it changes the level of care an individual receives.

Genetic Similarities Across Races and Ethnicities

Typically, people are categorized into four or five different race groups including Africans, Caucasians, Pacific Islanders, Asians, and Native Americans. The concept of race and ethnicity is based on fixed, unchanging types (Goodman, 2000). This is contradicted by people belonging to more than one racial or ethnic group. Racial groups are not defined and therefore the concept of race is constantly changing and adapting. A common misconception is that people within a racial group must possess certain genes that define them to that racial group. When

They argue that the slight differences can be linked to causes, prevalence, and outcome of disease (Scherer, 2006). Differences can be used to look for groups that may be prone to certain diseases. There is a racial stratification in the chance of prostate cancer. African Americans are 60% more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than white Americans (Ossario & Duster, January 2005). This is an area that needs further research in order to interpret what this finding means. The strongest argument in favor of using race in health would be genomics; this is the tailoring of therapies that use race as a proxy for individual genotyping. Genetic information is used to create personalized health care. However, the benefits of genomics are greatly overstated and using only the race of a person does not effectively tailor the therapy to them. More genetic information need to be collected about the person in order to increase the chance of therapy success (Scherer, 2002). Genomics research needs to advance much further if it were to have a practical application in