Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T20:00:32.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lessons from History: Why Race and Ethnicity Have Played a Major Role in Biomedical Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Troy Duster
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Perhaps it has always been so, but certainly in the post-Enlightenment era there are inevitable linkages between the fields of law, medicine, and science. Each of these realms of activity is embedded in the social milieu of the era, with practitioners emerging from families, communities, regions, and nations bearing deep unexamined assumptions about what is natural and normal. Equally important, these fields’ theoretical accounts of natural behavior will tend to dovetail and fit each other's – most especially as they pertain to the grand social issues of the period.

For the last century and a half, a conversation with a cross-section of lawyers, scientists, and physicians at any given historical juncture would produce a remarkable pattern, consistently repeated: There would be strong enthusiasm for the idea that the “current state of knowledge and practice” is both objective and transcends the current social milieu.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , Fall 2006 , pp. 487 - 496
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Schütz, A., “Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action,” in Schütz, A., Collected Papers: The Problem of Social Reality, vol. 1 (Natanson, M., ed., The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nihjoff, 1962): 3–47; Gutting, G., ed., Paradigms and Revolutions (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1980); Nader, L., ed., Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 1996); Epstein, S., Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996).Google Scholar
This segment is based upon an earlier paper: Duster, T., “Behavioral Genetics and Explanations of the Link between Crime, Violence, and Race,” in Parens, E. Chapman, A. R. and Press, N., eds., Wrestling with Behavioral Genetics: Science, Ethics, and Public Conversation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Kairys, D., ed., The Politics of Law (New York: Pantheon, 1982).Google Scholar
Friedson, E., Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1974); Starr, P., The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982).Google Scholar
Popper, K., Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1962); Fujimura, J., Crafting Science: A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Hoffman, S., “‘Racially-Tailored’ Medicine Unraveled,” American University Law Review 55 (2005): 395–456.Google Scholar
Johnston, J., “Resisting a Genetic Identity: The Black Seminoles and Genetic Tests of Ancestry,” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 31 (2003): 262–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, R. S., “Racial Profiling in Medical Research,” New England Journal of Medicine 344 (2001): 1392–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risch, N. et al., “Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race and Disease,” Genomebiology 3 (2002): 1–12.Google Scholar
The Federal Minority Health and Health Disparities Act of 2000, passed by the US Congress, created the National Center on Health and Health Disparities (Public Law 106–525, signed by the President of the United States on November 22, 2000).Google Scholar
Hinds, D. D. A. et al., “Whole-Genome Patterns of Common DNA Variation in Three Human Populations,” Science 307 (2005): 1072–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, P. and Schneider, J. W., Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness (St. Louis, MO: C.V. Mosby Co., 1980).Google Scholar
Cartwright, S., “Slavery in the Light of Ethnology,” in Elliott, E. N., ed., Cotton is King and Pro-Slavery Arguments (August, GA: Pritchard, Abbott and Loomis, 1860): 702.Google Scholar
Id.Google Scholar
Id., at 701.Google Scholar
Id., at 707.Google Scholar
Id.Google Scholar
Marks, J., Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race and History (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995).Google Scholar
Harding, V., There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Vintage, 1983).Google Scholar
Id.Google Scholar
Dred Scott is about the crime of slaves running away.Google Scholar
Conrad, and Schneider, , supra note 12.Google Scholar
Darwin, C., On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Carroll, J., ed. (Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Seagle, W., The History of Law (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1946).Google Scholar
Spencer, H., The Priciples of Sociology, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1906): at 50.Google Scholar
Spencer, H., Principles of Sociology, vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1899).Google Scholar
Jensen, A., “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” Harvard Educational Review 39 (1969): 1–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haller, J. S. Jr., Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1971): 124.Google Scholar
Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1951).Google Scholar
Tapper, M., In the Blood: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Wailoo, K., Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Jones, J. H., Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Experiment: A Tragedy of Race and Medicine (New York: The Free Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Malavet, P. A., America's Colony: The Political and Cultural Conflict Between the United States and Puerto Rico (New York: New York University Press, 2004): 152–54.Google Scholar
Id.Google Scholar
Quintanilla, R., “Anger at Island's ‘Pill’ Test Lingers,” The Orlando Sentinel, April 5, 2004, also published by The Puerto Rico Herald; available at <http://puertorico-herald.org/issues/2004/vol8n27/AngerPill.shtml> (last visited July 14, 2006). (last visited July 14, 2006).' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Quintanilla,+R.,+“Anger+at+Island's+‘Pill’+Test+Lingers,”+The+Orlando+Sentinel,+April+5,+2004,+also+published+by+The+Puerto+Rico+Herald;+available+at++(last+visited+July+14,+2006).>Google Scholar
Ellis, L. and Hoffman, H., Crime in Biological, Social and Moral Contexts (New York: Praeger Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Edgerton, R. B., Deviance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Menlo Park, CA: Cummings Publishing Co., 1976); Bohannan, P., African Homicide and Suicide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960); Linton, R., The Tree of Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955); Yap, P., “Mental Diseases Peculiar to Certain Cultures: A Survey of Comparative Psychiatry,” Journal of Mental Science 97 (1951): 313–27.Google Scholar
Ellis, and Hoffman, , supra note 35, at 7, 10.Google Scholar
Willis, P., Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (Aldershot, Hampshire: Gower, 1981).Google Scholar
Fordham, S. and Ogbu, J. U., “Black Students' School Success: Coping with the Burden of ‘Acting White’,” The Urban Review 18 (1986): 176–206; Ogbu, J. and Gibson, M., eds., Minority Status and Schooling: A Comparative Study of Immigrant and Involuntary Minorities (New York: Garland, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
There is the specter of an infinite regression problem with the notion that an anti-social personality will emerge to wreak the havoc of “deviant behavior” in whatever social community in which it appears. In a community of convicts, the infinite regress predicts that an anti-social personality would surface against the dominant social normative order. This is the ironic inversion of Emile Durkheim's insight that “a community of saints would produce a deviant.” Durkheim was reflecting upon the social functions of deviance, not upon the etiology of a particular deviant behavior among his hypothetical saints. Durkheim, E., “The Normal and Pathological,” in Kelly, D. H., Deviant Behavior (New York: St. Martin's Press, 5th edition, 1996): 59–63.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (1994): 79–80.Google Scholar
Id., at 81.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, H. H. Gottesman, I. I. and Lemery, K.S., “Epigenetic Approaches to Development Psychopathology,” Development and Psychopathology 9 (1997): 365–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, A. A., Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willis, , supra note 38.Google Scholar
Fordham, and Ogbu, , supra note 39.Google Scholar
Fordham, and Ogbu, , supra note 39, at 184.Google Scholar
Miller, J. G., Search and Destroy: African-American Males in the Criminal Justice System (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PA – 92–03, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance 93.242, under authority of Section 301 of the Public Health Service Act, P.L. 78–410, 42 U.S.C. 241.Google Scholar
The President's Crime Commission's survey of 10,000 households concluded that “ninety-one percent of all Americans have violated laws that could have subjected them to a term of imprisonment at one time in their lives,” Reiman, J. H., The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1984).Google Scholar
Skolnick, J., Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in a Democratic Society (New York: Macmillan, 1994).Google Scholar
Reiman, J. H., The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1984).Google Scholar
Jacobs, P. A. et al., “Aggressive Behavior, Mental Subnormality, and the XYY Male,” Nature 208 (1965): 1351–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, R., “The Biology of Violence,” New Yorker, March 13, 1995, at 68–77.Google Scholar
At the February 11, 1992 Meeting of the National Mental Health Advisory Council, of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Frederick Goodwin, at that time Director of Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA), made the following remarks (from the official unedited transcripts of the meeting): “If you look, for example, at male monkeys, especially in the wild, roughly half of them survive to adulthood. The other half die by violence. That is the natural way of it for males, to knock each other off and, in fact, there are some interesting evolutionary implications of that because the same hyper-aggressive monkeys who kill each other are also hyper-sexual, so they copulate more and therefore they reproduce more to offset the fact that half of them are dying.” After these remarks, Dr. Goodwin was “demoted” by Secretary of Health and Human Services Lewis Sullivan to the position of Director of the National Institute of Mental Health.Google Scholar
Jones, J. H., Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, (New York: The Free Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Wright, R., “The Biology of Violence,” New Yorker, March 13, 1995, at 68–77.Google Scholar
Id., at 74.Google Scholar
Id.Google Scholar
“Genes in Black and White,” New Scientist (July 8, 1995).Google Scholar
General Allotment Act (or Dawes Act), Statutes at Large 24, 388–91, NADP Document A1887.Google Scholar
The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 – P.L. 101–644.Google Scholar
Id.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J., The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1996).Google Scholar
Cartwright, , supra note 13.Google Scholar
Conrad, and Schneider, , supra note 12.Google Scholar
Duster, T., “Pattern, Purpose and Race in the Drug War,” in Reinarman, C. and Levine, H. G., eds., Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997): 260–87; and Duster, T., “The New Crisis of Legitimacy in Controls, Prisons, and Legal Structures,” The American Sociologist 26, no. 1 (1995): 20–27.Google Scholar