Benefits of a cultural studies-based dissertation #24

You get to hang out with some very decidedly non-lit people and hear about what's happening in other spires of the ivory tower.

Attended the Race, Pharmacology, and Medical Technology conference at MIT yesterday. Although some of the discussions about the legality of race-based therapeutics were only interesting from a social/general interest perspective, and won't have anything to do with what I'm working on, there were some interesting presentations on race/ethnicity and technology.

There were even cartoons.

A couple of researchers, one at University of London, and another at the University of Strathclyde presented some interesting information on the use of race in medical diagnosis, drug trials, and screening. The most interesting session was the one on historical uses of race - the body of the colonial 'Other', and the use of 'race' in South African blood bank HIV screening - because it becomes so clear when you look at historical uses of race in medical decision making that discussion of BiDil and other similar new pharmaceuticals is not a new conversation.

Of course there were many disagreements about whether new race-based therapeutics are a good thing, in that they save lives and redress inequalities in health care access (particularly in the U.S.), or whether they are a bad thing in the broader context because they simply reify suppositions about the genetic, or 'hardwired' difference between "races". One of the sociologists and a representative from the NAACP in particular went head to head - I know at one point in their exchange I wondered how they were going to get out of this discussion because it seemed to be escalating to a boiling point. They eventually agreed to disagree and that perhaps each meant something different in using the word "consensus" and backed away, but it sure was a different level of dissent than I'm used to seeing in my discipline (service sluts or no service sluts).

I was going to go for one more session this afternoon, but after a morning cheering at a VERY frigid soccer game, I was just too cold to contemplate trucking back out to the bus stop. And after a quick internet surfing session, I realized I could find publications by some of the same presenters online, which I can read in the warmth of my own house. Turns out there's some very interesting work taking place at the University of London in its Social Science Research Unit in conjunction with its Evidence-Based Policy Centre on the efficacy of this kind of socially-relevant yet sensitive development of race-based therapeutics.

This will become more and more important as not just cardiac drugs, but vitamins get in on the game. The website for GenSpec is marketing vitamins specifically targeted at specific "racial" groups (this grouping of course is a whole different set of problems).

How are they marketing vitamins to different groups? Well, marketing is the right word, because that's all it is. Check out the risk factors for Caucasians that the new vitamin will help reduce:

Deficient levels of vitamin D from lack of sunlight and insufficient supplementation are directly related to lower rates of calcium absorption in Caucasians.

The vast majority of Caucasians do not get the daily recommended amount of calcium.

62.4% of Caucasian men and 43% of Caucasian women are plagued with the health risks of being overweight.

Now for Hispanics:

100% of Hispanics tested by the Mayo Clinic had deficient levels of vitamin D, which is directly related to lower calcium absorption.

The vast majority of Hispanics do not get the daily recommended amount of calcium.

And for African Americans:

100% of African-Americans tested by the Mayo Clinic had deficient levels of vitamin D, which is directly related to lower calcium absorption.

89% of African-Americans do not get the daily recommended amount of calcium.

69% of African-American women and 58% of African-American men are plagued with the health risks of being overweight.

Now, I may not be the brightest kid on the block, but even I don't need my biology degree to figure out that there really isn't any difference here. [Note how the wording changes, but the overall message is the same: overweight people who don't get enough calcium and vitamin D can benefit from this. Since vitamin D aids in the absorption of calcium, it is added to milk, a good source of calcium, so low levels of both frequently occur together, and increaing vitamin D increases calcium absorption] Doesn't this advertise for our common inclusion in the species "human" than our differences?