Categories, racial

How should society take account of racial and ethnic differences in disease and illness, and of the genetic differences that may underlie some of them May it ever legitimately take those differences into account If so, what limits are required Are there ever duties to use race and ethnicity in making health policy and health care decisions In what cases would racial and ethnic categories be prohibited ... 

To be sure, funds may go to some projects defined on racial grounds, but the purpose is not to favor those groups as such but to use that category as the best means to serve the compelling purpose of meeting the health care needs of all citizens. Because some health care differences are race based, race must be taken into account to meet the health care needs of those persons. 

A legislative goal to avoid the disparate impact on African Americans of a race-neutral medicine, which would disproportionately disadvantage African Americans, should not be impermissible just because racial categories are used. It neither stigmatizes, denigrates, nor harms African Americans or whites. It is a constitutionally acceptable way of meeting the health care needs of the population as a whole. Indeed, failure to take race into account could mean that the health needs of some members of the community will not be met. 

A key issue in determining whether a racial or ethnic category is constitutionally acceptable is whether there are nonracial means of achieving the same result. In constitutional law terms, is the use of those suspect categories... 

If mandatory inclusion laws and African American-only studies are acceptable, then a fortiori there should be few doubts about the permissibility of funding research or treatment of diseases that have an especially high incidence among African Americans. Because not all racial groups are evenly distributed in disease categories, choices to fund some diseases more than others could end up favoring some races and genders over others. 

B. How likely would you be to participate in research if it might determine whether there are genetic similarities and differences in the way people of the same racial or ethnic group respond to certain medications Would you be. .. (READ CATEGORIES)... 

Because of possible genetic similarities, some medications based on genetic studies could be prescribed more often for people belonging to certain racial or ethnic groups. What effect, if any, would this have on your willingness to take this kind of medicine if it was prescribed for you Would this make you. .. (READ CATEGORIES)... 

Written largely in response to the same developments in the fascist states of Europe, Huxley s We Europeans (1935) made an even stronger case for the eradication of race as an explanatory category. One of the greatest enemies of science is pseudo-science, Huxley wrote. A vast pseudoscience of racial biology has been erected which serves to justify political... 

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