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Why race will matter after we all get our full sequences

Explore how genome analysis in medical files reshapes our understanding of race as a social construct in health risks.

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In my post"Health care costs and ancestry", a commenter says:

“Race” is a concept that should have died with disco. I imagine it will soon be feasible for every patient to have their genome analysis included in their medical file and the various risk and other pertinent factors explicated.

The chart to the left shows how race is a social construct. It's a bar plot which partitions ancestry, and as you can see, the Asian children are a mix of European and Asian. How does that happen? Because in 1980 the US Census included people of South Asian origin as "Asian Americans." In contrast, those of Middle Eastern origin remain "non-Hispanic white" (this not totally crazy, think Ralph Nader or Marlo Thomas). But it means that an ethnic Baloch from Pakistan is "Asian," and an ethnic Baloch from Iran is a "non-Hispanic white." Only a government bureaucrat would be happy ...

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