Should Physician Pay Attention To Race Essay

Before answering the question of “Should physicians pay attention to “race”?” lets first discuss why it is necessary for a physician to know the “race” of the patients. The first reason is in regard to pathogenic reasons leading to the field of pharmacogenetics. The second is more social reason and leads to racial division among a population. In considering of the latter reason, one should note that it may not the physician’s intention to cause any racial division. In fact the physician may have nothing but the best intentions in mind but the division it self comes from the interpretation of the physician’s questions. In order justify racial profiling or injustice in a society an uneducated and ignorant society that is searching for a genetic link to race may wrongfully assume genetics are the sole reason of racial differences. These assumptions are made stronger if someone of such a high social position like a physician takes “race” in consideration. However race it self cannot be linked to genetics in anyway. In fact according to the human genome project humans share 99.9% of the same gene pool. Furthermore a study by the Genetic Society of America, weakens the myth that race is caused by genetic differences by stating that there is a “larger Genetic Differences Within Africans Than Between Africans and Eurasians” meaning “blacks” are more genetically similar to “whites”

Pharmacogenetics is the study of “inherited genetic differences in drug metabolic pathways which can affect individual responses to drugs, both in terms of therapeutic effect as well as adverse effects”. The field of pharmacogenetics led to the understating that drugs have varying effect on different races. Physicians now know many examples of such varying drug response in different races. One of which is difference in hypertension medicine response by whites compared to African