Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease

A debate has arisen regarding the validity of racial/ethnic categories for biomedical and genetic research. Some claim 'no biological basis for race' while others advocate a 'race-neutral' approach, using genetic clustering rather than self-identified ethnicity for human genetic categorization. We provide an epidemiologic perspective on the issue of human categorization in biomedical and genetic research that strongly supports the continued use of self-identified race and ethnicity.

• Publication year

  2002

• Venue

  Genome Biology

• Publication date

  2002-07-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1186/gb-2002-3-7-comment2007PMID 12184798PMCID 139378
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• An epidemiologic perspective strongly supports continued use of self-identified race and ethnicity in biomedical and genetic research.

  Confidence 0.98

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review

• biomedical and genetic research

  research domain

  Research that investigates disease, biology, and inherited variation in human populations.

  Aliases: biomedical research, genetic research

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• epidemiologic perspective

  perspective

  An approach to the problem of human categorization that draws on epidemiology to evaluate how group labels are used in research.

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• genetic clustering

  method

  A method of grouping people by patterns in genetic data rather than by self-identified social categories.

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• human genetic categorization

  categorization framework

  The practice of assigning people to groups for the purpose of analyzing human genetic variation.

  Aliases: human categorization

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• race-neutral approach

  approach

  A proposed framework for human genetic categorization that avoids race and ethnicity labels and instead uses genetic grouping.

  Aliases: race-neutral framework

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• racial/ethnic categories

  population category

  Group labels based on race and ethnicity that are used to classify people in research and health contexts.

  Aliases: racial categories, ethnic categories

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• self-identified race and ethnicity

  population category

  Population labels chosen by individuals for describing race and ethnicity in research settings.

  Aliases: self-identified ethnicity, self-identified race

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review

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