Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

You cannot shame the shameless.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Republicans in disarray!

White supremacy is terrorism.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

We’re not going back!

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Second rate reporter says what?

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

You can’t love your country only when you win.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Brave New Worlds

Brave New Worlds

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Yesterday, it was earlier detection of Down syndrome, today it is race-based medicine:

In a finding that is likely to sharpen discussion about the merits of race-based medicine, an Icelandic company says it has detected a version of a gene that raises the risk of heart attack in African-Americans by more than 250 percent.

The company, DeCode Genetics, first found the variant gene among Icelanders and then looked for it in three American populations, in Philadelphia, Cleveland and Atlanta.

Among Americans of European ancestry, the variant is quite common, but it causes only a small increase in risk, about 16 percent.

The opposite is true among African-Americans. Only 6 percent of African-Americans have inherited the variant gene, but they are 3.5 times as likely to suffer a heart attack as those who carry the normal version of the gene, a team of DeCode scientists led by Dr. Anna Helgadottir reported in an article released online yesterday by Nature Genetics.

Dr. Kari Stefansson, the company’s chief executive, said he would consult with the Association of Black Cardiologists and others as to whether to test a new heart attack drug specifically in a population of African-Americans.

Interesting times we live in.

Reader Interactions

9Comments

  2. 2.

    neil

    You know, if they found a heart disease medication that only worked on white people, it wouldn’t be called “race-based medicine” .. it’d just be called “medicine.”

  5. 5.

    Lines

    Ok, snark aside, what happens when this is used, as sickle cell anemia was used (for those old enough to remember), to label blacks as “inferior”? It never going to be held in front of people’s faces as exactly that, but can race-based medicine work against the race that it is targetting to help the most?

    ooops, that damn tin-foil beany just keeps sliding around, I’ll get it fixed.

  6. 6.

    JohnGalt

    Man, I’m all for this. MIT’s Science and Technology magazine did a fairly lengthy story about this a few months ago. This is only the first example of directed medicine, and if it means that more effective and targeted pharmaceuticals and treatments are developed by using genetic variations among the races, then fantastic.

    Ultimately, as the article postulated, the goal is to come up with a specific drug for an individual (a far more discrete grouping that just “race”). Some people react to a particular cancer drug better than others – the aim is to discover the genetic variations that dictate a drug’s efficacy, and prescribe the best one for the individual.

    I don’t see any downside to this. Certainly I don’t think there are the same ethical issues that arise from the earlier Down’s Syndrome detection discussed earlier.

  7. 7.

    Jon H

    “It never going to be held in front of people’s faces as exactly that, but can race-based medicine work against the race that it is targetting to help the most?”

    The problem here is that it assumes white folks don’t have similar race-based ‘flaws’.

    There are problably medical conditions which white folks suffer more from than blacks do. (And I’m not talking about affluence-related conditions or sunburn.)

    However, that’s unlikely to come up in the media, because the lack of black victims will be drowned out by concern over the toll on “people”, without ever pointing out that those people are overwhelmingly white.

    That said, you never know, maybe a new bird flu epidemic will hit white folks hardest.

  9. 9.

    gswift

    Prescriptions tailored to genetic profiles is the wave of the future, and it doensn’t really have anything to do with race. Some of those genetic differences will be more common along racial lines. Sickle cell, for example, persists among equatorial populations because of malaria.

    Caucasians don’t get off scott free, we have much higher rates of cystic fibrosis, among other things.

    But there are lots of variations in individual biochemistry that affect what kinds of medication work best for that individual. Look at how many types of anti depressants for example. As it is now there’s a lot of trial and error with the doctor and patient involved in selecting the best medication. Soon we’ll be selecting the medication based on a genetic profile.

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