As someone who works in medical research, I have found it very surprising to see just how important race and ethnicity are in determining how effective certain medications are in people. In general, common medications like anti coagulants, ACE inhibitors, etc just don't work well in blacks compared to whites or vice versa. I find it fascinating that something as basic as physiological receptors can vary so much between the various races. Are racial differences in biology just an uncomfortable truth that is hidden from those who don't need to know? explain to me how we can be the same genetically (same by having same allele frequency between races and not having any unique alleles found in only one race) when there are all sorts of anatomical, disease states, and medication response differences that can be predicted solely by the group of aesthetic features commonly referred to as "race"?
example review article from american heart association:
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/118/13/1383.full
>>7691728
>I have an exception to the rule, therefore you're racist
Come on now
>>7691730
I guess we should really stop our cheese consumption.
>>7691728
Besides, there are plenty of papers that document variability in drug response based off of race (not just blacks and whites)
>>7691734
You have to define what a race is. You really think melanin production is the cause of medical variability?
http://jnc8.jamanetwork.com/
this is the latest guidelines for prescribing blood pressure medications. it literally includes race as a factor for determining which medicine to give. Doctors just straight up look at your skin color and can determine which medicine will work best for you. This is the latest JAMA guideline in the year 2015.
>>7691735
No, but when you do studies in, say, China, you can be pretty sure that your subjects are of Asian heritage. Plus there are other molecular markers that are used to determine race
>>7691739
obviously the correlation is strong enough that medicine incorporates it as a useful predictive tool. Go ahead and publish your paper in JAMA or NEJM that tells us all why we should ignore race in medicine effectiveness when it currently is useful. We are all waiting.
there are no facts, only opinions. reality is a social construct.
>>7691739
Enlighten me as to why African Americans have significantly higher rates of sickle cell anemia than any other race. Is it magic? Is it the white devil or the Jew behind it?
>>7691740
Heritage is different from race.
>>7691742
Sure it's useful. But it does not implicate that racial differences cause medical effectiveness.
>>7691745
Lemme tell you bout the birds and the bees
>>7691747
So you're essentially implying that race should be removed as a clinical factor for every disease and medication?
>>7691753
Whether or not something is a useful tool is engineering.
Whether or not something is the truth is science.
>>7691747
but when basic science researchers investigate a correlation and correspondingly find a pharmacodynamic or pharmacokinetic difference between people who identify as "black" or "white" or "asian" then it is implying that. and they are not using heritage, or ethnicity, the medical guidelines say "black" or "white" or "asian". Somehow the categories of race are well enough accepted to be reported in almost every medical study, printed on every government file, and reported in every news article. At what point do you accept it as a useful measure in medicine?
>>7691757
You're a fucking mong, you know that? There's literally piles of evidence of various SNPs more frequently found in certain races that can be associated with higher risk of ADRs and you're basically saying "nope, we are all humans friend :^) ." Die in a fire
>>7691758
> between people who identify as "black" or "white" or "asian"
You've said my whole argument here. What you identify as has no causal relation on what medicine is effective for you
>>7691763
>I identify as a solar-demiturtle and they've been found to have higher rates of heart disease.
Back to tumblr with you.
>>7691765
so you are cool with being prescribed a medication that has shown to be less effective for your self identified race? The race that 95% of random people off the street will identify you as. You would take the drug that does not work in the race that society perceives you to be?
>>7691772
Obviously I want the most effective tools (engineering) for my better health. That doesn't mean that the assumptions behind those tools have to be in one way or another.
>The race that 95% of random people off the street will identify you as
Here begins the random statistics :^)
You're making the assumption that people don't have a general concept of what their racial background is or that they'd lie about it on a form. Are you one of those race is a social construct faggots? It's ok, you can tell me, this is a safe place
>>7691768>>7691765
So it's just circumstance that individuals of a particular race have higher rates of certain SNPs than other races? Before you post another bullshit correlation graph, actually think about how they get to these conclusions. It's more than just "hey there's a correlation here, publish immediately and change medical therapy pronto". There's usually evidence as to why that correlation is important. It's not like the polio and ice cream consumption correlation from back in the day. Here, they have a correlation and try to make sense of it. Typically the correlations have some relation to ADME
>>7691773
how do we determine the radius of an atom? it is based in statistics. a 90% probability volume. does this mean that atomic volumes are not real? is all of statistical mechanics to be disregarded? should we disregard diffusion mechanics because particles diffuse according to a stochastic process?
deterministic processes are literally middle school tier physics. everything higher is unsolvable, stochastic, and only able to be approximated by statistics.
>>7691775
>So it's just circumstance
Don't put words in my mouth now. I don't know what molecular markers are causing these medical variabilities. The point is that you cannot make causal claims from correlating statistics regardless whether they are useful tools.
>>7691776
Yeah, you know what we call those? Theories. They still have an element of fallibility in them.
>>7691777
You're delusional. Say we havw drug x that is metabolized by one of the CYP enzymes. Asians are known to have lower levels of CYP enzymes leading to higher concentrations of drug x in the plasma and often ADRs. Often times when the dose is adjusted for CYP activity there is a significant reduction of both plasma concentrations and ADR's. Care to explain why that might be?
>>7691784
Define what an Asian is.
Say, a white man and a white woman have a baby on Asia. That baby is technically asian. Does he have the same markers as those who share the heritage of the continent Asia?
>>7691786
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot Russia was in Asia.
Let's try an asian woman and an asian man are in Nigeria.
>>7691786
But when they do these studies he isn't going to put down Asian as his race you fucking dolt. Since his parents are white, he'll check the box for having a genetically white background.
>>7691788
Would you prefer they use the word ethnicity instead of race?
>>7691789
>genetically white background
>mfw
>>7691791
I would prefer the word heritage.
>>7691789
Under what obligation is the person to say Asian or White? Whether or not the researchers agree with him?
>>7691793
Also, I guarantee you nobody in society would call that baby Asian. What's wrong with ethnicity?
>>7691799
Ethnicity is like inheriting a culture. It doesn't mean you inherit the DNA markers.
E.x. American weeaboos who have asian somewhere in their heritage probably identify as the race Asian.
>>7691786
I am not sure you are aware how medical studies are done. There is not a single clinical trial in existence that aims to prove a mechanism. They aim to show effectiveness. Race, as society loosely defines it, is effective as a tool. Many a drug fails every year because people have their mechanism all worked out, they have their neat, defined, clean cut definitions and metabolic pathways and gene sequences. But then for unknown reasons, the drug doesnt work in real humans. And somehow, we have drugs that we use everyday that we have no idea how they work. Guess which ones are more useful?
For some reason, these loose markers like race, gender, body type, socioeconomic status are all incredibly useful tools. And thats all that matters at the end of the day. You can shout to the high heavens how race isnt real because of interracial children or what not, but at the end of the day we will use it as the useful tool that it is to prescribe medicine, direct research, and even base stereotypes and discriminatory practices on. Just because I cant point to the "race" genotype doesnt mean it isnt real.
>>7691800
But the clinic staff will look at them and realize he is full of shit. You're basically arguing his word choice is poor. You could easily replace black with "indiduals with African heritage" or white with "European heritage" and so on
>>7691802
OP's question was
> In general, common medications like anti coagulants, ACE inhibitors, etc just don't work well in blacks compared to whites or vice versa. I find it fascinating that something as basic as physiological receptors can vary so much between the various races. Are racial differences in biology just an uncomfortable truth that is hidden from those who don't need to know?
Race is not biological. Heritage is.
>>7691804
Even heritage is giving him a lot of credit, because there's no means of determining a 'pure nordic gene expression'.
If I ask you to point to find the volume of an atom, you cant do it. the volume changes constantly with electron position. However, if I ask you to find the volume of a box made of atoms, you cant do it. I think race is the same way. If I ask you to find the race of an individual person, can have variations like half white/half black. However, If I ask a random person to seperate 10,000 people into 3 categories (caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid), and then ask 100 more random people to complete the task, I would have fairly small standard deviations (probably only like 2-3 people per category). Same as if I asked 100 random people to measure the volume of the box, and due to errors in using the ruler I would have maybe a 5% standard deviation. Race is probably an emergent property given a population.
>>7691819
*for volume of box, can do it. not cant.
>>7691819
Holistic interpretations are confined to anthropology, not science. Science is reductionistic.
>>7691821
but a box does not have a true volume, because its very atoms do not have a true volume. we are inherently using measurement techniques to approximate the volume of the box.
>>7691822
A box doesn't have a true volume in the same way that the center of the universe is at every point in the universe. What's the point of measuring motion when every point is the center?
>Are racial differences in biology just an uncomfortable truth that is hidden from those who don't need to know?
No, most people are just too stupid to understand biology or genetics. It's impossible to tell them how anyone varies from anyone else in such a sense, because they don't even know what a ribosome does.
>explain to me how we can be the same genetically
Some people lack one or more of the 'normal' 46 chromosomes, or have extra ones, yet they breed just fine. In fact, that's how chromosomal genetic 'disorders' are passed on, and probably a massive contributor to evolution. For that matter, not all of your cells have a full genetic complement - aging is, in part, caused by loss of genetic material.
Gene expression also changes drastically during life - children can't manufacture some amino acids. Puberty is caused by genes turning off and on. Given all of this, why are you focusing on race - blacks aren't defined by an extra chromosome.
>differences that can be predicted solely by the group of aesthetic features commonly referred to as "race"?
The scalp isn't like the rest of the epidermis - the scalp forms from the neural tube. The texture is different, because the cells on your scalp respond differently to the same flood of cytokines. Generally though, the epidermis and the nervous system form from the same germ layer.
The same cells that produce the skin and hair produce the brain. Any genetic switches that get flipped for one implicitly get flipped for the other. In other words, any change that effects the brain is also going to effect the skin and hair.
Taking this a step further, it's easy to see how these genes effect behavior and responses to drugs, and it has nothing to do with race - it has to do with coloration. In other words, white people with dark hair are different from white people with light hair.
We look like humans as an after effect of the mutations that gave us big brains. And protip - apes have straight hair, not curly hair.
>>7691745
Descendant of Africans who developed immune to Malaria. This is environment rather than racial. Take a bio class. Just like Europeans and Americans have dairy tolerance; Africans and Asians do not have this because diary consumption was not part of hte food chain in those regions.
>>7691728
>linking to /pol/
Reddit, you really need to go. The medical community openly acknowledges the existence of race, as do most biological sciences. Genetics and Biochemistry routinely use the sickle-cell anaemia example during undergrad units, which is proof of the genetic diversity between races.
Unfortunately, the modern Left has confused philosophical arguments with scientific fact. Because they cling so ardently to their belief that all people are equal, they have extrapolated this and exaggerated it to the point where they now think humans are immune to evolution. Because if evolution affected humans, then human populations could not all be identical thus equality could not exist. This is obviously problematic and the solution is to simply assert that race is a social construct and suddenly everything makes sense again.
>>7691911
>The medical community openly acknowledges the existence of race,
citation needed.
I remember my genetic professor at Oxford said the exact opposite. He said America still has old farts who believe in bunk science and sell it as fact. Even though most of the science world said otherwise. Everytime I hear a racial comment its either from an African or American.
>>7691911
>Genetics and Biochemistry routinely use the sickle-cell anaemia example during undergrad units, which is proof of the genetic diversity between races.
Its proof of enviromental changes to the human body. Which was genetic and biochem have been saying since the early 20th century. You're called a homo-sapient for a reason. Not homo-faggtus, or homo-niggurius, or homo-asiatus. Its clearly you failed basic bio.
