Please respond to the following question below:
Should doctors and other health professionals take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illness? Why? Can you think of a situation where thinking about race as biological might be misleading or have a negative effect? How would considering social race be different?
Yes, i do think doctors and health professionals should take biological race into account when diagnosing or treating a illness because it might give them a better understanding of where the patient is coming from and different type of situation to expect. Also different race experience different cultures and lifestyle, that is also a factor to diagnosing or treating their illness. At the same time, i would say i wouldn’t take race into account because it will all come down to genetics and genes plays a big role in us because it creates the characteristic of us. A situation where thinking about race as biological might be misleading is the skin color. Different skin color doesn’t mean we are that much different, we are all still very similar even if our skin color is different. Social race would consider different by lifestyle, culture, economics, social status, and etc. Social race would different among different depending on where they stand socially. Such as one might be financially doing better than the other person. This can impact their lifestyle which impact their health.
You are correct about social race and the implications is has for one’s health. Genes play an important role in who we are as well as what diseases we might get, but genes do not have anything common with race. Therefore using biological race as a determinant of health would be misguided and inaccurate. I hope this provides some clarity in this discussion.
No, doctors and health professionals shouldn’t, because my race will not determine what type of sickness or disease I will have in the future. Because when we think about race, our family, parents and ancestors come to mind, but I can have a sickness that’s not even a single person heard of in my family. A personal experience of race as biological might be misleading is when I was diagnosed with tuberculosis as a young girl, my doctor said it’s probably in my family because most patients with tuberculosis are from my parents country. And no one in my family had this sickness I was the first to have it. The negative was that instead of giving me tests to diagnose it more, the doctor was trying to figure out my family history, and when that failed she was telling my parents about the percentage of people with this sickness in my country, and the interesting thing was that I was born here, and never went back to my parents country. I think of social race as something negative, because social race has to do with a person’s wealth, lifestyle, income, and no one has the equal financial status, thus, it can affect people negatively to their health. And that’s when race will be mentioned. Like this particular group of race is rich and healthy and the other race is poor and that’s why they are not healthy.
I think you are spot on when it comes to social race– it often portrays groups of people negatively. This WOULD be important for a physician to know so that they might understand the stressful experiences related to that person. Biologically you presented a good example that assumptions about ancestry can be misleading in treating an illness. Good job.
Doctors and other health professionals should not take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating an illness. According to “Race the Power of Illusion: The Difference Between Us”, people from the same race are more likely to be genetically different from each other than people from a different race. Moreover, it is true that some illnesses run in the family or are genetically linked; however, that has nothing to do with their âraceâ because race is not a scientific classification but rather a social construct. Taking race into account might be biologically misleading or have a huge negative impact. Evidences on the video indicated that the students were surprised to find out that they were genetically similar to the students they thought had the least similarities between them.
Great job. You point out the family history and genes play an important role and if a physician were to use race as a proxy for those, they’d be wrong. Race doesn’t map on to our family history or genetics.
No doctors and other health professionals shouldnât take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illness. This is because race is not based on biology rather itâs an idea that ascribe to biology. Not the least, for an organ transplant we need blood type and tissues so in my opinion, doctors donât need to look into an individualâs race for treating an illness. After viewing todayâs Film, âThe Power of Illusionâ, it stated that two people from the same region for example such as Africa could be very different to each other than one African compared to an American. This could be misleading and can have negative effect because we thought that they would be all similar which they arenât. Social race depends on the quality of life one person is living whether what job heâs doing, whether they have health insurance or not, whether they are educated and so on. This is how we can differentiate social race based on an individual or groups of people.
I like how you compare social and biological ideas of race here. You are accurate! Good response.
No,although it can help at times to see where the sickness is coming from I don’t believe doctors should base health issues off biological or genetically connect to race. For one thing, it can be misleading and also be misinterpreted which brings false information. That is very critical. A doctor may say a certain disease is genetically related or biologically related or even race related. Although it can isolate ideas on how to group the illness, it does not always provide accurate measures. Race can only work if there is a history which can be helpful if there is a presence of a family member or previous generation that had same health problem as an individual. That usually helps answer the “whys “. It also can help doctors find correct methods and come to an understanding where these health issues occur mostly and by using race , they can isolate which groups have experience similar Health issues. It helps them stay organized. But not everything is pretty and ought to be organized and fit like a puzzle. A person can have a health issue that their families and generation have never encountered, then what? That itself should be a no to saying we should rely on race when dealing with health and doctors conclusions.
You are correct. Race does not map on to these other, more important concepts, like genetics and ancestry. Sometime when we use race to explain something we are causing that person undue stress because they are likely faced with racism on a daily basis. Good response.
Doctors should not take race into account when diagnosing and treating illnesses. There are some diseases that are inherited, but race is a social construct and two people from the same race can have more genetic differences than two people from a different race. Thinking about race as biological can be misleading for example in associating a certain disease with a specific race. Social race can determine many things for someone such as where they’ll live and how wealthy they will be.
Correct– social race is more related to health than the false notion of biological race. Well said.
I believe that health professionals should not take take biological race into consideration when diagnosing and treating illness. Throughout the film it was stated that even people within the same “race” are more different from each other than from people of another race. In order to have a successful blood transfusion, or kidney transplant, one’s genetics are observed in order to prevent rejection. In some cases even one’s own parents are not genetically compatible and therefore a blood transfusion would not be successful. Considering social race may affect the quality of health care one gets. Social race is closely associated with the career one has, or the social class one is in. Therefore it shows whether one has health insurance or enough money for health care. Someone with the capacity to pay a visit to a doctor will get different treatment from a person who cannot afford daily check-ups.
Good job here. We also have to be cautious about overlapping the ideas of biological and social race. We understand differences with wealth, but we should not link them to visible differences. It is so commonly done in our society that many are shocked to learn that the majority of the poor in this country are White. Thanks for the feedback.
After watching the video I have come up with my own perspective about biological race is an oxymoron as we have learned in class that there is nothing biological about race. Therefore, I donât think that âbiologicalâ race should be taken into account when diagnosing and treating a patient. When people start thinking about race too much as well as an illness that is due to a biological reason, it automatically makes it sound like nothing can be done about it. In addition, it gives a very bad impression towards family and upcoming generation. Nevertheless, I strongly agree about some illnesses run in the family or having genetically connection, it is still not due to race since race is social construct. For instance, there are many people I have seen they are born deaf, limp, or blind. Yet, it could be either white, brown, black or any other. Something as straightforward as geology can be a reason a disorder is more common, yet not race. Whatâs more important is race doesnât have its own disease. If it was then, doctor wouldnât even concerned themselves to treat someone if they thought its races that has diseases carry on. Moreover, people may have been misdiagnosed or mistreated if doctors were too quick to assume a personâs illness just based on their appearance. I believe that why everyone is different with others. There is a unique reason behind it because if one person kill someone therefore, who will you arrest or who will you not arrest to. We were made unique to develop our own and if we were not unique this current world would not be the way it is today. I believe that word race should not be in existence anymore, because at the end of the day we are all human beings who should be treated equally and not categorized into groups or either interpret our skin color of being one person being superior to the other. In conclusion, there were several students who had taken out their blood just to clarified whether itâs black, brown and white, the color of the blood is always going to be red.
AMAZING response! This is similar to the research I do– if people attribute their health to race, then they are left to believe there is nothing they can do about it. You are quite accurate, and this is one of the dangers of thinking about race as “natural”. When we understand that it was created, then we can work at destroying it. In the meantime, it is important for those in the scientific field to work towards making this common knowledge.
No, I believe doctors and other health professionals should definitely not take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illness. I say this because, by thinking race is biological one can assume a person who is say not African American is not at risk for sickle cell anemia. Since that is a known stereotype for African Americans, based on the video. When considering race to be biological, such as in the video, it showed how people from geographic locations that contain diseases, can be traced to those people of the same race who migrated over time. In this example; malaria spreading from Africa to the US. Sickle cell anemia has been linked to malaria from this continent. However skin color has not been linked to sickle cell anemia. Any person who has ancestors who were in those epidemic regions may also carry the gene related to sickle cell anemia, but also may not! One who is not African American can completely be overlooked when diagnosing, by doctors. Assuming their genetics do not match up with epidemics in Africa, because they don’t identify or appear as African American. However doctors can be wrong by assuming they have no relation with such people in Africa. Considering race to be a social term rather than biological would make a huge difference on who is considered to be a possible candidate for sickle cell anemia. I mean that because if doctors think of race as socially, they could forget the possibility that every African American is the same or every other different race is biologically the same when trying to diagnose a serious illness. Also going by transplants, it does not matter the race..just the genetics between two individuals by using blood or tissue. Thinking everyone is the same in a race based on skin color is wrong. Those individuals in the same race can be more different to each other, than two people from two different races. Noah in the film, was surprised to see he had some relations to somewhere in Africa. Overall, by understanding race is more social, eliminating biological, it would prevent false assumptions regarding who is really sick in the medical field.
You are making a good point about the differences between race (made up) and ancestry (geographical). It is practically impossible to identity where someone’s ancestors are from just by looking at them. One would run into many problems when treating someone for a disease. However it is still commonplace in our society for a person, when looking at another and noticing physical differences, to ask where that person is from. It’s a huge assumption and often an inaccurate one.
As we saw in the film in class looking at race from a biological view might be a difficult task as there are different factors contriuting to race when we expolre our biological make up we realize that different racial groups are really not that different.
I believe that doctors and other health care professionals not should take only biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illnessessince there is not that big of a difference among racial groups in fact there are more similarities than there are differences. I think through proper patient workup and accurate history taking of patients they will be able to build a profile and better diagonose people by taking into account their geographical locations, background and ancestors. A situation in which I believe race can be misleading if looked at biologically, I have a cousin that is black and she married a white man and they had a baby, now I expected that the child should have had something for my cousin who is black with kinky hair. Instead the baby seems to be completely white with her dad’s eyes, ears and skin tone. I think social race would be different because it has to do more with a persons class and their econimic status.
Good! Social race also takes into account how systems (ie. gov’t, schools) have used race in the past and understanding the differences between people that has resulted from that. When we understand those differences as natural, we never get close to solving the problem.
Doctors should not take biological race into account, because race has nothing to do with biology. I do think that doctors should use everything in there knowledge arsenal to rapidly find a diagnosis, especially when there is knowledge of an ethnic group that has a higher rate of a particular disease than others. Sickle cell is common, but not exclusively, to African Americans, usually diagnosed as a baby. Tay Sachs is a disease commonly, but not exclusively, to Ashkenazi Jews (eastern European decent), diagnosed as an infant.
Although there is testing for these diseases when a woman is pregnant. I don’t know how many get tested. I was tested when pregnant with my son, because my husband was also of the same decent. I was positive, so he had to be tested. My parents were shocked. Two positive parents have a 25% chance of having a child with Tay Sachs. There are probably other diseases that are prevalent in certain ethnic groups that are not detected during pregnancy. The doctor has to rule out certain possibilities given a certain set of diagnoses.
You remind me of an important fact: disease prevelance rates (by race) are not present at birth, which is the “smoking gun” that such differences are not natural. As for the diseases you mentioned, those have much to do with geographical location (sickle cell and tay sachs) as well as mating practices (Ashkenazi Jews typically only reproduce among each other putting them at extremely elevated risks for certain types of cancer– particularly breast cancer). When first discovered, breast cancer was found within over 80% of the Ashkenazi population– more so than any other group of people. This is due to the lack of biodiversity, or mixing, therefore the disease becomes a commonality rapidly.
I believe that doctors and health professionals should not take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illness to begin with because race has no biological basis. Conversely, race is a social issue that defines our culture, lifestyle, income. I also know that doctors would never bring up the thought of biological race to any patient in their practice because when they became doctors, they pledged to honor the Hippocratic Oath. A situation where thinking about race as biological might be misleading or have a negative impact is the color of your skin. We still live in a world today where many people are discriminated upon, just because of the color of their skin. Social race is categorized as how they live their life, overall health, income, support system, etc.
Wishing there was a “like” feature on OpenLab. I value that you’ve brought up the Hippocratic oath. Unfortunately race as biology is still a widely held belief among medical professionals and the experimental research that I conduct confirms its harmful effects on the patients in terms of how they think about their health and engaging health behaviors. We’ll talk about this aspect more in future classes.
I disagree, I do not think doctors and other health professionals shouldn’t take biological race into consideration when diagnosing and treating illness. I feel this will be biased. For example, my grandmother died 5 years ago of lung cancer, age 65 because she smoked cigarettes and cigars all her life. We know the consequences when picking up bad habits. Recently, my mother was diagnose with pancreatic cancer and she said the doctor said its heredity. My sister and I did not believe it what we heard and we had to pay that doctor a visit. How is my grandmother lung cancer connected to my mother’s diagnosis? My mother does not smoke nor drink. In addition, they were the first to be diagnose with a chronic illness. Please note my mother is doing well now!
No, I do not believe doctors should base any diagnosis on race. Could some races be susceptible to different types of diseases due to their geological locations, yes but there is more to it than race. Just because a certain race has a history of having a certain disease does not mean that another’s race chances are getting said disease is zero. If the possibility is not zero it cannot be ruled out as a factor until proper examination. I believe that failure in ruling out a disease that is potentially fatal because of my skin color and then me getting the disease because “lol you’re Spanish you don’t get that so I didn’t check” is negligent and is not what a doctor should be here to do. With social race we are looking at more factors contributing to my health. A doctor would have to ask questions and investigate rather than looking at my name on the clipboard and assuming or ruling out certain diseases. If the technical field you are told not to template match issues because it can be anything, if this is just now being incorporated into human medicine than I’m I wouldn’t be surprised if doctors were becoming computer technicians in mass because they’re being asked to be a little more human while they work.
No, doctors and other professionals should not take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illness towards a patient. Race is “man made” idea so through out our time people started to believe because you were a certain race you must have this certain illness or disease. After seeing the video I came to conclusion that genetically we are all the same, but society made us to believe that we are different because of race, which is not the case. In the video for instances the Sickle cell anemia at the beginning I believe African Americans where more prone to get Sickle cell anemia , but turns out that is a stereotype, Sickle cell anemia came from Africa, which is where we all our ancestors came from, only that the disease Malaria is linked to Sickle cell anemia which it found its way to United States, so if your ancestor had the gene its is possible to go to you, but not all cases are the same . A doctor must do everything in their power to do what is best for the patient no matter the race.A doctor cannot just assume because this patient isn’t a certain race to not test them if they have a certain illness, that can be misleading and for most cases fatal, which is wrong. When a doctor is diagnosing a patient they should do all different tests when it comes to an illness to make sure a better approach to cure the patient. As well when it comes to doing transplants towards a patient, all that matters is blood type or tissues, not their skin tone. Unfortunately we still live in society that people are still discriminated over their skin, people can from the same race and can genetically be different, over two people who are different in race can be genetically the same. Now social race can be different because it has to do with the person social class and how much their income is.Money has such a huge impact in the healthcare because it can affect how the person is treated. For instances if you in the high class socially you can afford the best treatment out their, get the best doctors to treat you and as well be cure a lot faster.Instead of someone who is in lower class must take the treatment they can afford and see the outcome from that treatment. Race is an idea that society came up with which should stop, specially in healthcare everyone with an illness or disease should be treated just like everyone else, because it was best for them.
Doctors and other health professionals should not take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illnesses because race is not based on anything biological meaning one can’t infer one’s entire genetic background solely based off looking at someone’s physical features. For example, as discussed in class, if a doctor is seeing a white patient, he or she cannot assume that the person might not be subject to sickle cell disease simply because the doctor assumes it’s more probable in African Americans and the patient is white. This assumption is negative because having any trace of African American (among other regions) ancestry would make you subject to this disease. This does not mean that simply because someone is white that they may not have African-American genetics from a past ancestor. In fact, there are white African-Americans just as there are black African-Americans. Considering social race would be different because based on society’s perception of race, people live differently accordingly. Because of social race, people live in different situations with different incomes, health lifestyles, and economic statuses. This would affect certain social races to be more prone to conditions and diseases and not be able to afford treatments when compared to others.
After watching the video I have come up with my own perspective about biological race is an oxymoron as we have learned in class that there is nothing biological about race. Therefore, I donât think that âbiologicalâ race should be taken into account when diagnosing and treating a patient. When people start thinking about race too much as well as an illness that is due to a biological reason, it automatically makes it sound like nothing can be done about it. In addition, it gives a very bad impression towards family and upcoming generation. Nevertheless, I strongly agree about some illnesses run in the family or having genetically connection, it is still not due to race since race is a social construct. For instance, there are many people I have seen that are born deaf, limp, or blind. Yet, the race could be white, brown, black or any other. Something as straightforward as geology can be a reason a disorder is more common, yet not race. Whatâs more important is race doesnât have its own disease. If it was then, doctor wouldnât even concern themselves to treat patients if they thought a certain race that has diseases with carry on. Moreover, people may have been misdiagnosed or mistreated if doctors were too quick to assume a personâs illness just based on their appearance. I believe that why everyone is different with others. There is a unique reason behind it because if one person kills someone therefore, who will you arrest or who will you not arrest to. Human were made unique to develop their own and if we were not unique this current world would not be the way it is today. I believe the word race should not exist anymore, because at the end of the day we are all human beings who should be treated equally and not categorized into groups or either interprets our skin color of being one person being superior to the other. In conclusion, there were several students who had taken out their blood just to clarified whether itâs black, brown and white, the color of the blood is always going to be red.
After watching âThe Different Between Usâ, I believe health professionals shouldnât take race in account when diagnosing illness. The most common mistake, a doctor will diagnose a black person with sickle cell before doing the full round of test, because itâs documented that black people have the high case of sickle cell. If doctor continue to have this misconception it can lead to rise in misdiagnoses. Social Race is just as bad, because it just brings the world back to class system minus determining your wealth or lifestyle by your skin color. Social race pre-define you and place you on scale, which labels your economic status, lifestyle, health and culture etc. so people in our society just visual judge you.
According to the film we watched in the class i think Doctor and other health professionals should not be taking biological race into an account when diagnosing or treating an illness. People of the same race not always have similar genetic makeup; consequently it would be hard to find a specific reason of a crime based on the genetic diagnosis or treatment. For instance, in the video we saw the DNA of an individual of a different race was a 100% match with the people of completely different race. If we think on the situation when doctors says mostly American black people who are tend to be very fat and more likely to have obesity disease because they eat more fast food than others. However, I disagree with them since anybody who eats fast food can get fat as well as obesity disease. Itâs just a matter of time and how often you eat. There isnât any race that can prevent us from getting fat although constantly eating the fast food, such as McDonalds etc. As a result, doctors canât really determine treatments according to human race. Race does not have anything to do with the human immune system. Yet, if the doctors use race as a references for treatment, it will lead to many problems because every individual body is different from one another. Race is just a term to define a group of people with the same characteristic traits. If someone is richer than another, he or she could be well treated in society no matter what race they are belong to. Social race would consider diverse by way of life, society, financial aspects, economic wellbeing, and so forth. Social race would diverse among various relying upon where they stand socially. For example, one may be fiscally showing improvement over the other individual. This can affect their way of life financially, mentally and so on.
no I don’t think that doctors should take biological race into account when treating their patients because according to science there is no evidence that all people of certain race posses a gene that makes them different from another gene. Genes have nothing to do with race can be misleading when trying to check who can be prone to certain diseases. The myth is that black people are at a high risk of getting the sickle cell disease while science says that a white person is at the same rate of risk of having a sickle cell of disease if his ancestors have lived in Africa. Looking at race by the social perspective, a doctor might tell a white person that he is not at any risk of getting a sickle cell disease without acknowledging the fact that his ancestors might belong to Africa and missing this small detail might make the patient pay a heavy price. Considering social race can also mislead the doctor into thinking that
Using Race to diagnose any illness is a fine line to walk. Any information that can lead a medical professional to accurately diagnose or prevent illness should be used. But different notions and ideas are often attributable to people of certain races. I think Race is important to diagnose and prevent certain Cancers. But I believe that social race could be a better way to access a particular person or communities exposure and risk for certain illnesses. The problem with strictly using race to diagnose lies in the deep seeded views that can be attributed to certain races. For example Black people have often been called lazy, this could lead a medical professional to make a diagnosis of diabetes, hypertension and attribute it to personal
Choices instead of availability of healthy food options in certain neighborhoods and biology. Using Race without taking into account sex, age, current living environment, access to nutritious meals, education, employment and genetics and substance abuse among many other factors can lead to misdiagnosis and poor preventive medicine.
Should doctors and other health professionals take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illness? Why? Can you think of a situation where thinking about race as biological might be misleading or have a negative effect? How would considering social race be different?
Doctors shouldnt take biological race into account because bio race is just not significant enough to counter what is already in medicine. Concrete procedures for illness that were tested for hundreds of years already work. Moreover, in the video, it said sickle cell was related to the biological evolution of humans to resist malaria. Sure, knowing the person came from a ancestry of people who have malaria can conclude the patient has sickle cell but there are already tests that determine if you have sickle cell. I see no emergent reason knowing the persons biological race will help more than what modern medicine wont find out. Social race is just a tool people use to categorize and organize the the physical differences humans have with one another, especially when it comes to color of skin. I think social race is completely useless when it comes to treatment and illnesses.
As a doctor/ health professional when diagnosing a patient race should not be in account of the situation. Every one has a right to fair treatment and and should not have to feel as if they are being judge while going through a difficult situation. When dealing with treatment I do think that race can come into account of the situation if it is going to be used for the benefit of the patient. For example: If a African American has a certain rash and the doctor suggest a certain cream that the doctor has known for other African American patients to use and it has worked for them. But sometimes that can backfire for some patients, my mom and I are mixed. My mom got a rash on her legs, they were red little pimple like bumps and they were very itchy for her. The doctors could not find out what was her rash. One time the doctor said I think it could be Psoriasis but your Black so that can’t be it. We are mixed and even if that is how you felt about the situation you can not deny a patient treatment that can possibly help. They were giving her all kind of medications to try just hoping it will work. If the doctors were to take social race into account at least they will be basing their opinions about the patient based on the things that are in control by the patient.
In my opinion Doctors and other health professionals should not take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illness. People canât be treated for what they look . Each human body has its own way of operating. Well I have a friend that was recently diagnosed with diabetes 2 and the doctors started to ask her a lots of questions. Questions such as where she lives, what kind of job she was doing and family history. The doctor told her that Hispanics and Africans Americans are most likely to get diabetes. She wasnât treated as she deserved. My friend doesnât live in a low income house, no family history of diabetes. The doctors assumed that because she is African American she must be living in a low income house that might had caused her diabetes. She was also sent to get medicine in the department where low income people goes which that made her feel very uncomfortable. They assumed she wasnât able to afford her medicine.
I don’t think so that doctors and health professionals should take biological race into consideration. Biological race won’t explain or describe any type of disease, but can help in the historical ancestor. Additionally, not even on the way we look will describe or health us to improve in any situation about a treatment of a disease. In the other hand, genetic will help us more to determine the disease and to find out a cure or any type of treatment that will prevent the disease to develop it more. For example, in my neighbor, I have a friend, he is from an African American. He was found that he had high blood pressure. Besides, he told me, that his doctors was asking him about the historical race of him. What is more, he recommended him to do some treatment that it was special for African American. As a result, he misguide himself as a doctor because none of what he told he was actually working for him.
Should doctors and other health professionals take biological race into account when diagnosing and treating illness? Why? Can you think of a situation where thinking about race as biological might be misleading or have a negative effect? How would considering social race be different?
Health professionals as well as doctors should not take biological race into account because every body is different on its own and race do not determine how a body reacts when an illness is present. Health is determine based on our health behavioral choices. When I volunteered at Gouverneur Hospital I had to do medical check up. I had to do a test for TB, the doctor asked me if my family history tested positive for TB; I said no. I was surprised to hear that, but she still recommended me to stay on top of it because TB is common among Asians. The doctor only focused on the biological race but didn’t take into account of anything else. Social race is just a label people categorize you into a specific race group based on your looks. Therefore, social race cannot determine whether a person might suffer from a disease just because how we look.
I don’t think that they should do that, because sooner of later, it would lead to racial profiling. Furthermore, I don’t think that there is a medical basis for that sort of treatment. We might have slight mutations in our bodies which makes us look different, but I don’t think that these mutations are significant enough to call for different interventions. Let us also not forget that many illnesses are due to environmental factors, so I think that each person’s case is different and categorizing them in one lump due to their race is a mistake. Biologic race and social race are different because the former has something to do with one’s genetic composition and is backed by scientific research, while the latter is a form of designation that is in reality really baseless, because it is merely popularized by society and ignorance.