Population Genomics and the Statistical Values of Race: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Biological Classification of Human Populations and Implications for Clinical Genetic Epidemiological Research.

The biological status and biomedical significance of the concept of race as applied to humans continue to be contentious issues despite the use of advanced statistical and clustering methods to determine continental ancestry. It is thus imperative for researchers to understand the limitations as well as potential uses of the concept of race in biology and biomedicine. This paper deals with the theoretical assumptions behind cluster analysis in human population genomics.

BiDil in the Clinic: An Interdisciplinary Investigation of Physicians' Prescription Patterns of a Race-Based Therapy.

Background: The African American Heart Failure Trial (A-HeFT) and the FDA approval of BiDil for race-specific prescription have stirred the debate about the scientific and medical status of race. Yet there is no assessment of the potential fallouts of this dispute on physicians' willingness to prescribe the drug. We present here an analysis of the factors influencing physicians' prescription of BiDil and investigate whether exposure to the controversy has an impact on their therapeutic judgments about the drug.

Personalized medicine, availability, and group disparity: an inquiry into how physicians perceive and rate the elements and barriers of personalized medicine.

Background: The success of personalized medicine depends on factors influencing the availability and implementation of its new tools to individualize clinical care. However, little is known about physicians' views of the availability of personalized medicine across racial/ethnic groups and the relationship between perceived availability and clinical implementation. This study examines physicians' perceptions of key elements/tools and potential barriers to personalized medicine in connection with their perceptions of the availability of the latter across subpopulations.

Group-based and personalized care in an age of genomic and evidence-based medicine: a reappraisal.

This article addresses the philosophical and moral foundations of group-based and individualized therapy in connection with population care equality. The U.S.

Genomics and the conundrum of race: some epistemic and ethical considerations.

This article addresses the question of whether race is a biological category and whether it is permissible to use it in biomedicine. I suggest that instrumentalism, a view that race is a problem-solving tool rather than a concept with an objective referent in nature, may be more consistent with the available scientific evidence. I argue that, to be morally permissible, the instrumentalist use of race in research and medicine requires stringent guidelines.

Black/white disparity in self-reported hypertension: the role of nativity status.

This study investigates the association between race and self-reported hypertension and whether this association varies with nativity status in the National Health Interview Survey, 1997-2005. Logistic regression was used to estimate the association between race and self-reported hypertension before and after adjusting for selected characteristics. The overall prevalence of hypertension was 25.