Medical research is starting to take account of people’s race

Some excerpts below from an article in The Economist. I have left out all the agonizing

Last month researchers from the University of Texas and the University of Mississippi Medical Centre published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. They had studied three versions (or alleles, as they are known) of a gene called PCSK9. This gene helps clear the blood of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), one of the chemical packages used to transport cholesterol around the body. Raised levels of LDL are associated with heart disease. The effect of all three types of PCSK9 studied by Jonathan Cohen and his colleagues was to lower the LDL in a person’s bloodstream by between 15% and 28%, and coronary heart disease by between 47% and 88%, compared with people with more common alleles of the gene.

In Dr Cohen’s work, the race question proved decisive. Of the 3,363 volunteers who described themselves as “black”, 0.8% carried an allele of PCSK9 called version 142X and 1.8% carried one called version 679X. Among 9,524 self-described “white” volunteers, a mere 0.02% carried version 142X and 0.04% carried version 679X. By contrast, 3.2% of white people carried the third allele under study, version 46L, while only 0.7% of black participants did. The researchers found that these relatively rare alleles correlated with low LDL, and did so in both blacks and whites, allowing them to conclude that it was the gene change that was crucial. If the team had ignored race and simply compared those who had heart disease with those who did not, and asked which alleles were linked to the risk, they would probably have missed the clinical significance of the alleles… Ignoring race altogether would be to the detriment of medical knowledge about the very people who might benefit.

In some cases, though, the difference clearly is genetic. A gene called UGT1A1 controls the metabolism of a colon-cancer drug called irinotecan. Approximately 20% of African-Americans, 15% of whites and 1% of Asians have two copies of a non-functional version of this gene called *28. Because individuals lacking functional UGT1A1 are at risk for serious complications if given the standard dose of irinotecan, genetic testing of patients before starting irinotecan therapy has become normal. Yet, while only 1% of Asians have two copies of the *28 allele, which is detected by the genetic test, 2.5% of Asians have another non-functional version called *6 which is not detected by the standard test. Indeed, it does not occur in blacks or whites. Thus, testing Asians for the *28 allele does not provide them with the same quality of care as it does for African-Americans or whites. “Identical treatment is not,” as Dr Risch puts it, “equal treatment.”

Posted by jonjayray on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at 02:25 AM in
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Comments:

Posted by ben tillman on April 19, 2006, 10:07 AM | #

If the team had ignored race and simply compared those who had heart disease with those who did not, and asked which alleles were linked to the risk, they would probably have missed the clinical significance of the alleles…

I’m sorry—that doesn’t make any sense.

Posted by John S Bolton on April 19, 2006, 03:12 PM | #

It means that the statistical significance of the alleles would be too low to register in the combined, multiracial group. If we pretend that race is unimportant, except when it comes time to suppress the merit system in favor of racial quotas, officialdom and professoriate get to show their social-racial concern, but life-and-death information is treated as unimportant.
This also blasts the social-constructionist story of racial identity to egalitarian dystopia and back. On the basis of such nonsense, one could tell a group of at-risk blacks to socially construct themselves as non-black, referencing each other as social race-constructors, and reduce their heart disease risk accordingly.
This consideration, will of course not persuade a professoriate that believes gravity is socially constructed. The question should also be: why would they believe nonsense of this exact kind, unless it serves all too well the needs of their patrons, the officials, to aggrandize their power.

Posted by JB on April 20, 2006, 04:15 PM | #

how come this entry isn’t in ‘Genetics & Human Bio-Diversity’ ?

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/C16/

if you look at the front page right now a lot of are not categorized

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