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

Risch, Neil and Burchard, Esteban and Ziv, Elad and Tang, Hua (2002) Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease. Genome Biology 3(7):1-12.

Abstract

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.