I just wrote a piece for the Root.com (a site headed up 
by the very newsworthy Harvard professor Skip Gates) about race and cancer outcomes. It was a response, actually, to a story that appeared on Slate.com.
Conservative columnist William Saletan, after analyzing a National Cancer Institute study that reveals African Americans with gender-based cancers have a “significantly worse overall survival rate” than whites, concluded that the likely reason is genetic differences in our racial makeup.
The NCI study found that black Americans are 21 to 61 percent more likely than whites to die from ovarian, breast, and prostate cancers, even when dynamics such as income, education, and access to medical care are factored in.
The findings could point to any number of things, such as our community’s disturbing history of late-stage diagnoses, which could be the result of a misguided but reasonably understandable mistrust of the medical community.
Saletan, however, argues that it’s our DNA. There’s just one problem with his theory: It’s wrong.
There is no gene that equals black or white, or any race for that matter. When it comes to the human genome, we’re all pretty much the same. Here’s what Saletan has to say:
“Denying that race is real or that genes play a role in racial differences is just as simplistic as pretending that race explains everything or that discrimination has vanished.”
He goes on to proclaim that people are afraid to acknowledge genetic differences along racial lines for fear it will “lay a scientific foundation for segregation.”
Hello? The Bell Curve? The Tuskegee Experiment? The African slave trade?
We don’t have to look far to see how race and “DNA coding” can be dangerously manipulated for financial or social gain. And when it comes to medical classifications, that notion just smacks of so-called genetic inferiority. Saletan wastes no time supporting this idea, too.
In discussing his theory on biology and black Americans, he references a column he wrote two years ago about race, heredity intelligence, and the reasons white American kids have higher IQs than black American kids. They have bigger brains, he claims. So, from his perspective, if biological determinism manifests itself in intelligence, it makes sense that it would extend to health outcomes, too.
But here’s the real deal: Discussing genetic differences based on race sidetracks us from the issue at hand, which is closing the cancer survival gap, the original purpose of the study. The fact is that a more comprehensive analysis is needed, and this is where documenting the health trends of ethnic and racial groups becomes important. It is indeed worth exploring.
There’s little doubt, for instance, that obesity and stress exacerbate illnesses among African Americans, as does our diet. To make matters worse, African Americans don’t regularly visit a doctor, nor do we develop long-term relationships with medical professionals. Probably that mistrust creeping up again. But these issues are as much about social and environmental influences as they are about personal choices and lifestyle practices.
Saletan doesn’t appear to consider any of this before pronouncing our racial makeup the culprit. If you ask me, it’s because focusing on DNA is an easy way out. If people can point to a scientific explanation for why blacks don’t fair so well when battling cancer, then we don’t have to scrutinize our nation’s health care system or examine external contributors to poor survival outcomes.
The biggest danger, as Raina Kelley wrote in her column for Newsweek, is that we’ll start talking about medical conditions in terms of “us or them.” And, as history shows, that sort of deviation is just a big fat waste of time for everyone.
5 Comments
July 27, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Great article. The discussion, as you point out, needs to focus on our nation’s health care system, and the environmental and social factors that contribute to these alarming and unnerving discrepancies. When you factor in the foods that are served and sold in communities of color coupled with stress factors it’s easier to blame DNA than acknowledging and rectifying these conditions. Additionally, I’ll suppose that Saletan would also stand by the viewpoint that Gates should have just calmed down and everything would have been OK.
July 27, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Great article. I am not a scientist but it would make sense that families have similar (some might call hereditary) factors would predispose them to certain illnesses. Environmental factors such as ground water, eating habits, athleticism, stress, medical availability, etc. all can be factors. I also wonder if blood type may have a deciding role as well – or at least play a role in determining WHAT illness might occur. I know for a fact that certain areas in the country have a higher rate of cancer (South Salem, NY). I can only surmise that this has to do with metals in ground water, air quality, etc. There are all sorts of environmental factors coupled with what we ingest that play a key role in our health. Unfortunately, the general population is not familiar with how to heal naturally and want a quick fix at the doctor’s office.
Saw a show called the Tree of Life on the Food Network this past weekend. It showed how eliminating all extra sugars in your diet can get diabetic patients off all medications. Amazing results!
I wonder … would we be healthier if we quit taking so many drugs/medications and starting eating like our grandparents used to – no processed foods or canned goods (or minimal anyway) … what would happen to our health care industry? Would it start to lose money? Is it really in their best interest to make us healthy or to keep us sick by only helping us a little? … something to think about.
July 28, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Open invitation to you and your readers to participate in the Being Cancer Book Club. This month we are discussing “The Light Within: the Extraordinary Friendship of a Doctor and Patient Brought Together by Cancer”. “When young gynecologic oncology fellow Lois Ramondetta was first summoned to the room of a new ovarian cancer patient, neither she nor the forty-nine-year-old professor of religion she encountered named Deborah Sills thought they had much in common. They certainly had no idea that they were about to embark on a transcendent odyssey that would become a soul-deep friendship. Now their heartfelt story, The Light Within, follows these two women through a decade of friendship and “big lives”—husbands, children, friends, and careers—ultimately crossing the country and traveling to foreign lands, where they spoke and wrote together about the intersection of doctors, patients, and spirituality. Both women searched together and openly for answers with honesty and intimacy until Deborah passed away in the spring of 2006.”
Monday is Book Club day; Wednesday Guest Blog and Friday Cancer News Roundup.
Also check out Cancer Blog Links containing over 350 blog links and Cancer Resources with 250 reference sites, both divided into disease categories.
Please accept this invitation to join our growing cancer blogging community at http://www.beingcancer.net
Take care, Dennis
August 5, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I know there are certain illnesses (linked to DNA) that affect particular groups of people, such as Tay-Sachs and Sick Cell. But to say that a person has a less chance of survival because of DNA seems a bit extreme. If we are to listen to people like Saletan, we might as well just give in to the inevitable. Why spend money on treatment? As mentioned, it’s easier (and less costly) to blame it on genetics than to change environment and behavior. The fact that Saletan is still pushing the notion that white people have larger brains and are therefore more intelligent says a lot about him. I remember hearing that in the 60s, but thank goodness I had teachers that told me not to believe that crap.
August 6, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Saying that there is a biological basis for different outcomes gives the excuse that funding and help doesn’t need to be extended to certain people because there outcomes are “natural” so why waste money on them. This argument has been around for decades and is frequently used by Conservatives to justify cutting social and health services. Scientific racism is alive and well.