ReferencesRace and GeneticsControversies in Biomedical, Behavioral, and Forensic SciencesPilar Ossorio University of Wisconsin-MadisonTroy Duster New York UniversityAmong biomedical scientists, there is a great deal of con-troversy over the nature of race, the relevance of racialcategories for research, and the proper methods of usingracial variables. This article argues that researchers andscholars should avoid a binary-type argument, in which thequestion is whether to use race always or never. Research-ers should instead focus on developing standards for whenand how to use racial variables. The article then discusses1 context, criminology, in which the use of racial variablesin behavioral genetics research could be particularly prob-lematic. If genetic studies of criminalized behavior useforensic DNA databanks or forensic genetic profiles, theywill be confounded by the many racial biases of the lawenforcement and penal system.Over the last three centuries, scientific and “folk”conceptions of race have been inextricably in-tertwined. Because of this interweaving, scien-tists tend to look back over the history of their respectivefields and conclude that previous generations erred bybeing caught up in the social maelstrom of their times(slavery, eugenics, evolutionary or theologically based the-ories of the origins of separate races, etc.). Although quitewilling to acknowledge these past errors, scientists attributethem to a research agenda mired in the social realities ofbygone times. Each succeeding generation of researchersbelieves that contemporary scientific views of race tran-scend the current social milieu. Each generation believesthat it has achieved a heretofore unrealized level of scien-tific objectivity, free from ideology or the pressures ofpolitics, funding sources, and administrative requirements.In this context, it is notable that the last decade hasproduced a remarkable fracture of the scientific consensusabout race. The literature in several fields is replete withlanguage about “the end of race” as a legitimate concept inscientific discourse, practice, and application (Katz, 1995).This no-race argument has elicited a strong counteringposition, with proponents vociferously arguing for the con-tinued meaningful use of the biology of race (Burchard etal., 2003; Risch, Burchard, Ziv, & Tang, 2002). In thisarticle, we examine the implications of this debate in dif-ferent realms of inquiry and practical action. The firstsection addresses what we call the binary trap in contem-porary science discourse, a dead-end debate that has gen-erated more heat than light. We offer an alternative ap-proach for analyzing the relationship between race andbiology, one that may prove more productive for thosestudying health and behavior.In the second section of the article, we examine fo-rensic (law enforcement) and behavioral uses of genetics.Technologies originally developed for biomedical purposescan have multiple uses, including law enforcement appli-cations. Forensic and behavioral genetics may operate inconjunction with or in opposition to biomedical genetics toreify existing racial categories or produce new permuta-tions and understandings of race. Furthermore, when bio-medical or behavioral scientists use biological samplescollected for forensic purposes, they may not be aware ofthe sampling biases introduced through law enforcementprocesses. Such biases may create misleading correlationsof race, genetics, and behavior.Race in Science—A Way Out of theBinary TrapThe Race-in-Science DebateRecent population genetics studies and related media re-ports have produced confusion and a contentious debatewithin the natural sciences regarding the nature of humanraces and the role of race in biomedical research andclinical practice. Some prominent scientists have arguedthat race is not biologically real, that it is such a flawed,imprecise concept that it should not be used in research ormedicine (Bhopal, 1997; Chaturvedi, 2001; Schwartz,2001). Other equally prominent leaders in the fields ofpopulation genetics and clinical medicine have argued thatretaining racial categories is important because (a) they canserve as useful proxies for ancestry and (b) using racialcategories will improve research quality or decrease cost byreducing irrelevant background variability between casesand controls (Burchard et al., 2003; Risch et al., 2002).In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies and thebiotechnology industry focused their attention on between-group genetic differences. Such differences might permitfirms to market drugs to particular racial or ethnic groupswhose collective genetic constitution indicates a statisti-Pilar Ossorio, Department of Medical History and Bioethics, and LawSchool, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Troy Duster, Department ofSociology and Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge,New York University.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to PilarOssorio, University of Wisconsin Law School, 975 Bascom Mall, Room9103, Madison, WI 53706-1399. E-mail: [email protected] 2005●American PsychologistCopyright 2005 by the American Psychological Association 0003-066X/05/$12.00Vol. 60, No. 1, 115–128 DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.60.1.115cally greater-than-average likelihood of positive drug re-sponses or a lower risk of side effects (Kahn, 2003; Win-slow, 2001). In March 2001, the pharmaceutical companyNitromed received a green letter of approval from the Foodand Drug Administration for the first clinical trials purpose-fully aimed at detecting drug efficacy in one racial group-African Americans. The drug under study, BiDil, is a heartfailure drug and has been touted as the “first ethnic drug.”Nitromed’s chief executive officer, Michael Loberg, ex-plicitly stated that the African American population wouldbe the marketing target for the drug, because meta-analysesof early studies indicated that “BiDil reduced mortality in66% of African Americans, but proved of very little benefitto Whites” (Winslow, 2001, p. B6). The BiDil trial inAfrican Americans was stopped in the summer of 2004.1The racialized nature of the BiDil trial and marketingis highly contested terrain, and the fields of pharmaco-genomics and pharmacotoxicology are engaged in fierceinternal battles as to the appropriate role of race in diag-nostics and treatment (Braun, 2002; Frank, 2001; Kahn,2003; Lee, Mountain, & Koenig, 2001; Xie, Kim, Wood, &Stein, 2001).