The Field Of Pharmacogenomics : An Individual 's Genetic Makeup

This article argues that race is not only a social construction, but that genetics also play an increasingly pertinent role. The author supports this claim by analyzing the genetic tracings of many medical institutes whose purpose is to discover one’s ancestry. The author claims these genetic links are increasingly important because many grants, applications, scholarships, and the like are determined by one’s racial status. The author also claims that genetic racial differences are important because the white male has been used as the standard in medical practices and the author feels that needs to change.

The main purpose of this article was to unexamined biases, to see how much they contribute as well as to address ethnic and racial in health care disparities. Biases can be referred to as favoritism, a favor of one and against another, very systematic and differing by racial and ethnic groups. Many psychologist has turned their focus and studies on common biases, which biases influence medical decisions and interaction.

BiDil is a medication used to treat heart failure in African Americans. With its approval by the FDA in 2005, the drug was sought out to be a significant step towards personalized medication. With personalized medicine, we could begin to see reduced prices as well as healthier individuals. The real question is… What type of medicine is in BiDil that targets ONLY African Americans? Could this be a marketing scheme?... Or are African Americans that much different than any other ethnic group?

Additionally, there is a substantial lack of real evidence that the divisions between groups that we often specify as “races” actually have specific genetic identities. The extreme presence of ambiguity central to races, and the plentiful variations within these races point towards evidence that even two randomly selected citizens of European descent could be more genetically related to a person of Asian descent than they are to each other.

From a biological perspective, race is a social construct that has little bias in genetics. In the PBS documentary, episode 1: Race: The Power of Illusion, Microbiologist Pilar

Over the 200-year history of the United States of America, race has been central to various social issues. To this day, March 24th, 2017, the socially constructed concept of race has a major influence on how a person is treated by society (Onwuachi-Willig, 2016). In this section of the class we are discussing the interplay between race and healthcare.

When attempting to understand health care disparity, one must first also understand race. As race applies to health care inequity, Williams and Sternthal (2010) suggested that race is not purely biological but also a social classification system created by the hegemonic class. As such, favorable traits are those attributable to whites, thus creating an atmosphere predisposed to prejudices. In a health care setting where providers rely on swift judgment and scientific data to arrive at decisions, culturally ingrained norms are bound to influence attitudes

Many years ago, an epileptic Hmong girl named Lia Lee entered a permanent vegetative state due to cross-cultural misunderstanding between her parents and her doctors. An author named Anne Fadiman documented this case and tried to untangle what exactly went wrong with the situation. Two key players in her narrative were Neil Ernst and Peggy Philp, the main doctors on Lia’s case. As Fadiman describes, “Neil and Peggy liked the Hmong, too, but they did not love them… [W]henever a patient crossed the compliance line, thus sabotaging their ability to be optimally effective doctors, cultural diversity ceased being a delicious spice and became a disagreeable obstacle.” (Fadiman 265) At first glance, this statement seems to implicate Neil and Peggy as morally blameworthy for a failure to be culturally sensitive enough. However, upon further inspection of the rest of the book, it becomes clear that Neil and Peggy’s failure to be more culturally sensitive to their Hmong patients was caused by structural issues in the American biomedical system. To prove this point, this paper will first present a background to Lia’s case, then discuss possibilities for assigning blame to Neil and Peggy, then show evidence for the structural issues in American biomedicine, before finally concluding.

In looking on the subject of race you realize there is a racial stigma when it comes to health care. The American health care system is geared to treat the majority, while the minority suffers. As one looks at the African American society we see the racial discrimination in the health care system. According to the American heart association, “African Americans are 28% more likely

Does racism still exist today? Although many believe it was a problem in the past, it still exists today. Many People are still not aware that it still exists in our workforces, especially in medical field. Although racism in medicine can be very offense, it can sometimes be beneficial and help reveal differences in diseases based on genetic make up. These differences can be taken in the wrong manner and can lead to social problems especially if these distinctions are thought of as ethnic differences. In Gregg M. Bloche’s article. “Race, Money and Medicine”, he states that we should erase racial categories from medicine but only use them if they are beneficial for the patient’s health. Peter Clark, author of “Prejudice and the Medical

When the scientific community begins to spread unfounded hypotheses regarding genetic differences between races, particularly differences that attribute poorer health or increased susceptibility to disease among minority groups, a Pandora’s Box is opened of potential dangers which can aid proponents of racist doctrines. Historically, scientific studies that sought to prove biological differences among races have led to violently racist movements like slavery, colonialism, and the Holocaust. Hence, as other pharmaceutical companies follow NitroMed’s path and begin marketing drugs targeted for specific racial groups, the dangers of such race-based therapeutics must be acknowledged.

One of the points raised in IOM’s article to prove that racism is a prevalent cause of health care disparity is the way the health care system is set-up, meaning at times, some hospitals and clinics can adopt a policy to contain health care cost, but may pose hindrances to minority patients’ capability to access the care.

Moreover, Bidil race labeling might actually have undermined the broader goal of increasing racial minorities’ participation in clinical trials (Winickoff and Obasogie, 2008). For instance, by specifying African Americans as the only beneficiaries of BiDil, the same idea could be applied for a special efficacy drug for Whites, “the largest and most lucrative population segment of the United States” (Winickoff and Obasogie,2008). This logic could be used to justify the exclusion of non-Whites from clinical trials. This seems to be what happened in 2006 when Schering-Plough decided to exclude African Americans from the Phase 2 trial of SCH 503034, an investigational hepatitis C protease inhibitor. “Even though African Americans have the highest hepatitis C prevalence of any racial group in the United States, the company excluded this population not for any safety rationale but to boost efficacy numbers” (Winickoff and Obasogie,2008). BiDil, as a race-specific medicine also encourages the trend for other pharmaceutical companies to try and come up with other drugs in order to copy Bidil marketing success.

Given that new racism masks racial predisposition, current racism restrains the public from addressing ethical issues and from creating social improvements. By “[u]ndermining or disguising the impact of racism on racialized health disparities,” the AJPH editorial on “Black Lives Matter: A Commentary on Racism and Public Health” notes that “the perpetuation of these inequities” (Garcia et al. 27) initiates constant ignorance and does not lessen the problems of racism. Instead, racism falls into institutional categories that globally spreads to cultivate its immoral notion. Persistently oblivious to racism, society adapts to malicious racist dispositions as it denies the presence of racism. On the other hand, the journal article “The Past, Present, and Future of Informed Consent in Research and Translational Medicine” mentions the emerging issues of bioethics from past and future complications (Susan M. Wolf et al. 9). Emphasizing concerns on informed consent, the researchers call on the complex issues by exposing how decision-making affects professionals and their participants. Discussing future innovations, the researchers assert that professionals must carry the participants’ choice in a methodical fashion that aims to protect individual rights. As patient advocates, professionals must respect patient privacy, private ownership, and informed consent. Therefore, affirmative action offers a

Gordon Moskowitz and his co-authors’ (2012) expands on this discussion of unconscious bias by associating it with stereotyping certain racial groups. The providers’ unconscious biases are referred to as implicit biases, and demonstrate usefulness if correctly used to identify groups more readily susceptible to a health condition than others (996). When used correctly to identify these individuals, patient outcomes have a positive outcome. However, a hasty assumption that leads to an incorrect stereotype results in severe negative outcomes from a resulting incomplete or inaccurate diagnosis by the physician (1000). These implicit biases also tie back to the previous theme