Why Race-Based Medicine is a Problem

Dorothy Roberts is a professor, author and social justice advocate. Fifteen years ago, she volunteered to participate in a study that involved a genetic test. While she was filling out the questionnaire she noticed that it asked for her race. In the human genome, in genetic terms, human beings are more than 99.9% the same, regardless of race. So why did her race matter? She continued to dig deeper into the situation and perform more research. As time went on, she became disturbed as she found out how race runs deeply throughout all medical practice shapes. Racial differences in medicine take place in diagnoses, measurements, treatments and prescriptions. As a sociologist, Roberts knows that race is a social construction. As a legal scholar, she also knows that lawmakers were the ones to invent legal definitions of race, not biologists. Therefore, why is race such a big factor when it comes to medical treatment and why are doctors not stepping up to the genomic revolution? In order to learn more about this problem in our medical world, and how we can make change in the system, watch the video below. https://www.ted.com/talks/dorothy_roberts_the_problem_with_race_based_medicine/transcript?language=en#t-141817