Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-06T00:50:56.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Preserving the Concept of Race: A Medical Expedient, a Sociological Necessity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Stephen G. Morris
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this essay I argue that there are strong reasons for preserving the concept of race in both medical and sociological contexts. While I argue that there are important reasons to conceive of race as picking out distinctions among populations that are both legitimate and important, the notion of race that I advocate in this essay differs in fundamental ways from traditional folk notions of race. As a result, I believe that the folk understanding of race needs to be either revised or eliminated altogether.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 2011 , pp. 1260 - 1271
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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.)

Footnotes

‡

I am thankful to Jason Zinser, Lacey Sischo, and especially Jonathan Kaplan for offering helpful advice during the writing of this essay.

References

David, Richard, and Collins, James. 1997. “Differing Birth Weight among Infants of U.S.-Born Blacks, African-Born Blacks, and U.S.-Born Whites.” New England Journal of Medicine 337:1209–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Drake, Amanda, and Walker, Brian. 2004. “The Intergenerational Effects of Fetal Programming: Non-genomic Mechanisms for the Inheritance of Low Birth Weight and Cardiovascular Risk.” Journal of Endocrinology 180:1–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoffman, Sharona. 2005. “‘Racially-Tailored’ Medicine Unraveled.” American University Law Review 55 (2): 395–456.Google ScholarPubMed
Kaplan, Jonathan. 2010. “When Socially Determined Categories Make Biological Realities: Understanding Black/White Health Disparities in the U.S.” Monist 93 (2): 283–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Robert, and Stansfield, William. 1990. A Dictionary of Genetics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mays, Vickie, Cochran, Susan, and Barnes, Namdi. 2007. “Race, Race-Based Discrimination, and Health Outcomes among African Americans.” Annual Review of Psychology 58:201–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pigliucci, Massimo, and Kaplan, Jonathan. 2003. “On the Concept of Biological Race and Its Applicability to Humans.” Philosophy of Science 70 (4): 1161–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risch, Neil, Buchard, Esteban, Ziv, Elad, and Tang, Hua. 2002. “Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race and Disease.” Genome Biology 3 (7): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Root, Michael. 2003. “The Use of Race in Medicine as a Proxy for Genetic Differences.” Philosophy of Science 70:1173–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, Noah, Pritchard, Jonathan, Weber, James, Cann, Howard, Kidd, Kenneth, Zhivotovsky, Lev, and Feldman, Marcus. 2002. “Genetic Structure of Human Populations.” Science 298:2381–85.Google ScholarPubMed
Sankar, Pamela, Cho, Mildred, Condit, Celeste, Hunt, Linda, Koenig, Barbara, Marshall, Patricia, Lee, Sandra, and Spicer, Paul. 2004. “Genetic Research and Health Disparities.” Journal of the American Medical Association 291 (24): 2985–89.Google ScholarPubMed
Wade, Nicholas. 2005. “Genetic Find Stirs Debate on Race-Based Medicine.” New York Times, November 11, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/health/11heart.html.Google Scholar
Wang, Lin, Feng, Yan, Zhang, Yan, Zhou, Huanyu, Jiang, Shangun, Niu, Tianhua, Wei, Lee-Jen, Xu, Xin, Xu, Xiping, and Wang, Xiaobin. 2006. “Prolylcarboxypeptidase Gene, Chronic Hypertension, and Risk of Preeclampsia.” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 195 (1): 162–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weiss, Kenneth, and Fullerton, Stephanie. 2005. “Racing around, Getting Nowhere.” Evolutionary Anthropology 14:65–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar