Race and Genetics Controversies in Biomedical Behavioral and Forensic Sciences Pilar Ossorio Troy Duster University of Wisconsin Madison New York University Among biomedical scientists there is a great deal of controversy over the nature of race the relevance of racial categories for research and the proper methods of using racial variables This article argues that researchers and scholars should avoid a binary type argument in which the question is whether to use race always or never Researchers should instead focus on developing standards for when and how to use racial variables The article then discusses 1 context criminology in which the use of racial variables in behavioral genetics research could be particularly problematic If genetic studies of criminalized behavior use forensic DNA databanks or forensic genetic profiles they will be confounded by the many racial biases of the law enforcement and penal system biology one that may prove more productive for those studying health and behavior In the second section of the article we examine forensic law enforcement and behavioral uses of genetics Technologies originally developed for biomedical purposes can have multiple uses including law enforcement applications Forensic and behavioral genetics may operate in conjunction with or in opposition to biomedical genetics to reify existing racial categories or produce new permutations and understandings of race Furthermore when biomedical or behavioral scientists use biological samples collected for forensic purposes they may not be aware of the sampling biases introduced through law enforcement processes Such biases may create misleading correlations of race genetics and behavior O Race in Science A Way Out of the Binary Trap ver the last three centuries scientific and folk conceptions of race have been inextricably intertwined Because of this interweaving scientists tend to look back over the history of their respective fields and conclude that previous generations erred by being caught up in the social maelstrom of their times slavery eugenics evolutionary or theologically based theories of the origins of separate races etc Although quite willing to acknowledge these past errors scientists attribute them to a research agenda mired in the social realities of bygone times Each succeeding generation of researchers believes that contemporary scientific views of race transcend the current social milieu Each generation believes that it has achieved a heretofore unrealized level of scientific objectivity free from ideology or the pressures of politics funding sources and administrative requirements In this context it is notable that the last decade has produced a remarkable fracture of the scientific consensus about race The literature in several fields is replete with language about the end of race as a legitimate concept in scientific discourse practice and application Katz 1995 This no race argument has elicited a strong countering position with proponents vociferously arguing for the continued meaningful use of the biology of race Burchard et al 2003 Risch Burchard Ziv Tang 2002 In this article we examine the implications of this debate in different realms of inquiry and practical action The first section addresses what we call the binary trap in contemporary science discourse a dead end debate that has generated more heat than light We offer an alternative approach for analyzing the relationship between race and January 2005 American Psychologist Copyright 2005 by the American Psychological Association 0003 066X 05 12 00 Vol 60 No 1 115 128 DOI 10 1037 0003 066X 60 1 115 The Race in Science Debate Recent population genetics studies and related media reports have produced confusion and a contentious debate within the natural sciences regarding the nature of human races and the role of race in biomedical research and clinical practice Some prominent scientists have argued that race is not biologically real that it is such a flawed imprecise concept that it should not be used in research or medicine Bhopal 1997 Chaturvedi 2001 Schwartz 2001 Other equally prominent leaders in the fields of population genetics and clinical medicine have argued that retaining racial categories is important because a they can serve as useful proxies for ancestry and b using racial categories will improve research quality or decrease cost by reducing irrelevant background variability between cases and controls Burchard et al 2003 Risch et al 2002 In the late 1990s pharmaceutical companies and the biotechnology industry focused their attention on betweengroup genetic differences Such differences might permit firms to market drugs to particular racial or ethnic groups whose collective genetic constitution indicates a statistiPilar Ossorio Department of Medical History and Bioethics and Law School University of Wisconsin Madison Troy Duster Department of Sociology and Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge New York University Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Pilar Ossorio University of Wisconsin Law School 975 Bascom Mall Room 9103 Madison WI 53706 1399 E mail pnossorio wisc edu 115 cally greater than average likelihood of positive drug responses or a lower risk of side effects Kahn 2003 Winslow 2001 In March 2001 the pharmaceutical company Nitromed received a green letter of approval from the Food and Drug Administration for the first clinical trials purposefully aimed at detecting drug efficacy in one racial groupAfrican Americans The drug under study BiDil is a heart failure drug and has been touted as the first ethnic drug Nitromed s chief executive officer Michael Loberg explicitly stated that the African American population would be the marketing target for the drug because meta analyses of early studies indicated that BiDil reduced mortality in 66 of African Americans but proved of very little benefit to Whites Winslow 2001 p B6 The BiDil trial in African Americans was stopped in the summer of 2004 1 The racialized nature of the BiDil trial and marketing is highly contested terrain and the fields of pharmacogenomics and pharmacotoxicology are engaged in fierce internal battles as to the appropriate role of race in diagnostics and treatment Braun 2002 Frank 2001 Kahn 2003 Lee Mountain Koenig 2001 Xie Kim Wood Stein 2001 This article will not present details of the BiDil debate Rather it notes this debate as an example of the possibility that antiquated