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Race, Rare Genetic Variants, and the Science of Human Difference in the Post‐Genomic Age
Author(s) -
Torres Jada Benn
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
transforming anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.325
H-Index - 9
eISSN - 1548-7466
pISSN - 1051-0559
DOI - 10.1111/traa.12144
Subject(s) - race (biology) , biomedicine , human genetic variation , variation (astronomy) , genetic variation , human disease , genetic variants , sociology , disease , human genetics , epistemology , human genome , biology , genetics , genome , medicine , demography , gene , gender studies , population , genotype , philosophy , physics , pathology , astrophysics
Understanding of human genetic variation has grown significantly in the twenty‐first century but has not been adequately incorporated into anti‐racist anthropological perspectives. Research into the underlying structure of human disease suggests that common diseases may be caused by rare genetic variants. These variants tend to be specific to populations that are oftentimes racially defined. Consequently, genetic studies that seek to identify disease‐causing rare variants rely upon racialized frameworks. Despite social scientific perspectives that endorse a nonbiological basis to race, within biomedicine, biological uses of race remain entrenched due to their utility for identifying the causes of the disease. Anthropologists must be responsive to these utilizations of race or risk irrelevance in shaping how researchers understand and use human variation. Through critique and careful incorporation of new knowledge about the nature of human genetic variation into anthropological perspectives, anthropologists can continue to make meaningful contributions to understanding the relationship between biology and race.