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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]
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.
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 ...
In biological taxonomy, race is an informal rank in the taxonomic hierarchy for which various definitions exist. Sometimes it is used to denote a level below that of subspecies, while at other times it is used as a synonym for subspecies. [1] It has been used as a higher rank than strain, with several strains making up one race.
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.
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Scientific studies have shown the lack of efficacy of adapting pharmaceutical treatment to racial categories. "Race-based medicine" is the term for medicines that are targeted at specific racial clusters which are shown to have a propensity for a certain disorder.