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The Use of Race and Ethnicity in Medicine: Lessons from the African-American Heart Failure Trial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Jay N. Cohn
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Extract

The practice of using race or ethnic origin as a distinguishing feature of populations or individuals seeking health care is a universal and well-accepted custom in medicine. Although the origin of this practice may, in part, reflect past prejudicial attitudes, its use today can certainly be defended as a useful means of improving diagnostic and therapeutic efforts. Indeed, the tradition of dividing populations by some racial distinction in clinical research has nearly always revealed differences in mechanisms of disease and disease frequency that can enhance diagnostic and therapeutic precision.

At the conference occasioning this symposium, Professors Duster and Rotimi provided persuasive evidence that so-called race is not an accurate way to distinguish populations and that identification by race has led to serious prejudice. Professor Cho pleaded that race should never be used to characterize population differences.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , Fall 2006 , pp. 552 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2006

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References

See the conference video at <www.lifesci.consortium.umn.edu/conferences/conferences.php> (last visited April 19, 2006); Duster, T., “Lessons from History: Why Race and Ethnicity Have Played a Major Role in Biomedical Research.” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 34, no. 3 (2006): 487–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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