Georgia M. Dunston, a black specialist in human genetics, is speaking with a white reporter. We are in her office at Howard University's College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., at the end of the day. The question is whether race, in the scientific sense, is relevant to the health status of African Americans and other minorities. Even if this weren't the topic, race in its unscientific aspects – the thorn in the side of American history – would be with us too.
Dunston, 60, a spirited talker, has long held that race has little to contribute to medicine because the physical characteristics of race are superficial and misleading. For just as long she has contended that black people – those who participate in studies as well as black scientists – should be included in greater numbers in medical research. Her two positions don't fit together neatly – at least they don't to me, but that's probably because the social dimensions of race complicate my view.
After hours of questioning, Dunston finally becomes impatient, as she tries to make me comprehend the tenuous connections between genes, biology, health, and race. “There's no direct correlation between a racial group and anything in the human genome,” she says. “There's no diagnostic test for African Americans or Asian Americans or any other kind.”
She leans forward and presses her forefingers into her cheeks. “But we can see there are biological differences,” she said. "It's self-evident that races exist. No one is saying that features are not biologically captured [by race], but that's not all there is. There's much more biology that isn't being captured. What we see is only a small part of our biology."
She sits back. "Race is a social grouping based on phenotypic [visible] characteristics. There have been laws based on this social grouping, and I use the term because it's relevant to our society. We can't dismiss the factors that have led to tremendous disparities in health – which don't have to do with genes, by the way. I'm not trying to make race go away but to redefine it using what we have learned about biology through the Human Genome Project. Race has been a surrogate for biology, and we don't have that luxury anymore."
