Goodbye to all that?
At last week’s Translating ELSI meeting, I was amazed at how large the topic of race and genetics loomed. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been: Race is our deep and abiding national wound — it never seems to heal.
In Slate, Will Saletan rethinks his earlier defense of James Watson’s unfortunate remarks:
…policy prescriptions based on race are social malpractice. Not because you can’t find patterns on tests, but because any biological theory that starts with observed racial patterns has to end with genetic differences that cross racial lines. Race is the stone age of genetics. If you’re a researcher looking for effects of heredity on medical or educational outcomes, race is the closest thing you presently have to genetic information about most people. And as a proxy measure, it sucks.
Might personal genomics and widespread sequencing help to change this?
I work as an Assistant Professor in the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (although this site and its content are my own).
In 2007 I became the fourth subject in Harvard geneticist George Church's Personal Genome Project. As the PGP moves forward, I am chronicling the dawn of personal genomics, that is, people obtaining their genomic information for whatever reason(s) and figuring out what to do with it. I am interested in the relevant technologies and especially the attendant privacy and other ethical/legal/social issues.
This blog may also discuss some of my non-genome interests or, to paraphrase Dwight Yoakam, "Guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music, etc etc."
The header image comes from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's multimedia performance piece, "Ferocious Beauty: Genome."
May 6th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Or change who is discriminated against…..
-Steve
www.thegenesherpa.blogspot.com