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Researchers have investigated the relationship between race and genetics as part of efforts to understand how biology may or may not contribute to human racial categorization. Today, the consensus among scientists is that race is a social construct, and that using it as a proxy for genetic differences among populations is misleading. [1] [2]
[5] [6] The division of humankind into biologically separate groups, along with the assignment of particular physical and mental characteristics to these groups through constructing and applying corresponding explanatory models, is referred to as racialism, racial realism, race realism, or race science by those who support these ideas.
Recent interest in race-based medicine, or race-targeted pharmacogenomics, has been fueled by the proliferation of human genetic data which followed the decoding of the human genome in the first decade of the twenty-first century. There is an active debate among biomedical researchers about the meaning and importance of race in their research.
The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality is a book by psychologist and behavior geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Published on September 21, 2021, by Princeton University Press , the book argues that human genetic variation needs to be acknowledged in order to create ...
In it, Lewontin presented an analysis of genetic diversity amongst people from different conventionally-defined races. His main finding, that there is more genetic variation within these populations than between them, [2] is considered a landmark in the study of human genetic variation and contributed to the abandonment of race as a scientific ...
Despite genetic and biological research attesting that there is no biological basis for race or genetic profile that is common to people with the same racial category, racial essentialism is a common lay theory that promotes rigid ideas about social hierarchies. [20]
This scientific debate was not, however, a purely academic one. It was a central icon of public fascination, often in the popular magazines of the time. Even today, scientists are still working on finding a genetic basis for racial categorization. None of these efforts has been successful in defining race in an empirical and objective way.
Some scholars have argued for a genetic understanding of racial health disparities in the United States, suggesting that certain genes predispose individuals to specific diseases. [213] However, the U.S. Census Bureau's recognition of race as a social and not biological category necessitates a social understanding of the causes of health ...