3/17/2023 0 Comments Review ireadorIt has been 33 years since this article was published acknowledging the flaws of racial classification in medical science, but we do not seem to have taken heed of this and moved on.Įven when some studies are not race-related, the demographics section will often include race when defining the cohort almost as a default. Writing in 1986, Cooper and David conclude that 'The pragmatism of medicine and its isolation from social science may account for much of this backwardness'. Many articles in our own South African Orthopaedic Journal still include racial categorisation. Creating race from this converts the richness of this continuous variable into a falsely simplistic and reductionist categorical one in a process that defies any attempts at rational or objective methodology. These differences are not easily categorised into groups but rather are a complex and beautiful continuum. Human diversity includes skin colour, hair, facial features and all other physical attributes that make us different. Heather Norton, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Cincinnati who studies pigmentation, remarks that 'We often have this idea that if I know your skin colour, I know X, Y, and Z about you'.Īll scientific categories we use in our research are subjected to the rigours of clear definition, yet race is often used with no attempt to define what it is. Skin pigmentation simply reflects how our ancestors used melanin to deal with sun exposure, and not much else. Many of the differences we see are based on skin pigmentation, culture and language, which when combined are often referred to as race. But the concept of race is not grounded in genetics. She further expands that it is a made-up label that has been used to define and separate people for millennia. It is a sad testimony to the unexamined hegemony of race in our consciousness and our research that such a study was approved by the ethics committee and passed a rigorous peer-review process.Įlizabeth Kolbert writes that race as a scientific entity does not exist. After a massive outcry, and rightly so, this article has been withdrawn. And just recently, a 2019 study from Stellenbosch University on intellectual capabilities of Coloured women concluded that Coloured women were cognitively inferior. When Morton died, in 1851, the Charleston Medical Journal in South Carolina praised him for 'giving to the negro his true position as an inferior race'. The use of racial categorisation in medical literature is not always benign it can carry motives of oppression or perpetuating stereotypes. Importantly, Dr Samuel Morton worked before DNA was discovered. Sadly, from these humble beginnings, the science of race was born, and very infrequently reexamined. His ideas were soon endorsed and popularised by the defenders of slavery. Caucasians were at the top of the pile and represented the most intelligent of races. His conclusion was that there were Ave races in the world and they all originated from separate acts of creation (polygenism). In his widely published craniometry experiments, he stuffed various skulls with pepper seeds which he then decanted to determine the volume of the braincase. He was a prominent scientist that lived in the USA in the 19th century. Dr Samuel Morton is known as the father of scientific racism. Looking into the history of race-based medical research is a sobering exercise. As Ta-Nehisi Coates so eloquently states in his book, Between the world and me: 'But race is the child of racism, not the father'. Race is often used as a social and political means of justifying and reinforcing oppression of one group of people by another. This is not to say that racism does not exist. It is contemporary knowledge and widely accepted that there is no scientific basis for race. Race is used in various ways in medical research: studies looking at the impact of socioeconomic factors on health the effect of culture on medical compliance and understanding the impact of language and, in some cases, a link is made between the race of participants and a perceived common or unusual clinical outcome or clinical pathway. Different categorisations of race are used in different contexts and when I encounter these references in articles I read or review, I am often struck by how the use of race, as a category, somehow escapes the normal scientific rigour we use to define any other category. MBChB, FC Ortho, MMed, PG Dip HPE Associate Professor and Head of Clinical Unit: Orthopaedic Trauma Service Groote Schuur Hospital and University of Cape Town categories are widely used in medical scientific research both in South Africa and in other countries around the world. The use of racial classification in medical research
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