Science vs. Politics: The Social Construction of Race

There are diseases that are overwhelmingly present in some ethnic or racial groups, such as cystic fibrosis (European ancestry), Tay-Sachs (Ashkenazi Jews), sickle-cell anemia (blacks), or hereditary haemachromatosis (Celts, British, and Scandinavian).  You can find individuals outside those groups with these diseases, but they are generally rare.

If you go to WebMD, you get a screed about how racial differences in diseases aren't real because race is socially constructed, and that poverty and racism are the real causes of apparent racial differences.  Yet when you go to scholarly papers, there are plenty of studies that are examining differences that are genetic, and not environmental, such as this paper from Circulation, "Race-Specific Differences in Endothelial Function: Predisposition of African Americans to Vascular Diseases."  The paper demonstrates using "single human umbilical vein endothelial cells" drawn from health-matched black and white Americans that there are genetically-based differences in NO/O₂⁻/ONOO⁻ release that explains, even apart from diet, poverty, and medical care, why American blacks have higher rates of diabetes and hypertension than WHITES.

This is a serious problem: pretending that every difference in illness among different ethnic and racial groups is non-genetic is a recipe for health care system disaster.  It would be like deciding to apportion Tay-Sachs screening clinics in Casper, Wyoming using the same per capita as New York City or Los Angeles, or deciding that funding for sickle cell anemia treatment should be distributed across every state proportionate to population, rather than based on likely risk.