Furthering my claim that the New York Times is becoming more regressive in its Leftism, we have a long article in the science section on race and medicine. The thing is, the author of the piece does his very best to pretend that there’s no such thing as “race”, even while investigating—and buttressing, to some extent—the connection between race (or ethnicity, if you will) and illness.  But the ideological petticoat of author Moses Velasquez-Manoff shows throughout, particularly at the end. Valasquez-Manoff, a science writer, lacks science degrees, which may explain his cluelessness about how scientists conceive of “race,” but, given that I tried to explain it to him in a long phone interview, I doubt it.

I’ve explained my take on “race” many times before, and you can search for it on this site. (If you want just one article, go here, which summarizes and glosses a like-minded piece from Quillette by Bo Winegard, Ben Winegard, and Brian Boutwell). Like virtually all geneticists, I don’t see a finite and absolutely discrete number of easily identifiable “races”—that’s a strawman that people like Velasquez-Manoff attack. Maybe the general public thinks this, but Velasquez-Manoff is talking to scientists and about accepted science here.  “Race” (or “ethnicity”, if you like that word better) is simply a term for human “ecotypes”: groups of different evolutionary ancestry that have evolved different traits.

Like many animal species, humans, especially during our evolution after we left Africa, were divided into relatively discrete groups that were geographically isolated from other groups. In the absence of frequent migration between areas (such as we have now), these groups differentiated genetically, and generally along lines of geography. (Barriers like oceans and mountains are formidable obstacles to inter-group mating!) That differentiation was due to either divergent forms of natural or sexual selection, or to random genetic drift.

You can see these differences using either DNA sequencing or morphology (physical traits). Although, as is well known, there is more genetic differentiation among individuals among one ethnic group or population than among different groups, you can nevertheless pick out these groups by using combinations of genes, for differences at one gene tend to be correlated with differences in other genes. So, for example, we can see clustering of genes among people from the Americas, Oceania, native Australians, Europe/Middle East, and East Asia, and this clustering enables their recognition as groups that evolved semi-independently.

The Winegard et al. paper gives several examples of how “ethnicity” is correlated with genetic clustering; here’s one quote:

Empirical studies bear this logic out. The geneticist Hua Tang and her colleagues, for instance, found that self-reported ethnicity corresponded almost perfectly with genetic clusters from 326 microsatellite markers  (a microsatellite marker is a piece of repetitive DNA in which a series of DNA base pairs are repeated). Other studies have demonstrated even more power to identify people’s ancestry accurately. These studies illustrate that, whatever the meaning of the claim that there is much more variation within than among races, researchers can, if they use the appropriate procedures, distinguish human ancestral groups from each other with remarkable accuracy. The significance of these genetic differences among groups is entirely an empirical question.

And my own words, which quote the Tang et al. paper:

Here’s a quote from the abstract of the Tang et al. paper, published in The American Journal of Human Genetics, an excellent journal. The article is free online:

Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.

Despite the clear evidence that human populations are genetically different and differentiable—although the presence of clusters within clusters precludes us from picking out discrete “races” having sharp boundaries—ideologues pretend that these differences don’t exist or aren’t meaningful. That’s because they fear that recognizing different groups will lead to discrimination against those groups, for the very same reason that biological ideologues won’t consider the possibility that there are genetically based differences between the behavior and neurology of men and women. Recognizing differences, they fear, will lead to institutionalizing bigotry based on those differences: to racism and sexism. The article by Winegard et al. dismantles this idea handily. The truth is the truth, regardless of whether it fits your ideological biases. And we can and should promote equality on moral rather than biological grounds.

But Velasquez-Manoff doesn’t like the idea of race, and so when he’s trying to discuss whether we should base some medical decisions or treatment on ancestry or ethnic background, he gets all antsy. You can read the article for yourself:

Here are a few quotes from the piece that shows the author’s lack of understanding of a more sophisticated concept of “race”, and his attempt to dismiss the importance of geographic differences between human populations:

Professor Yudell belongs to a growing chorus of scholars and researchers who argue that in science at least, we need to push past the race concept and, where possible, scrap it entirely. Professor Yudell and others contend that instead of talking about race, we should talk about ancestry (which, unlike “race,” refers to one’s genetic heritage, not innate qualities); or the specific gene variants that, like the sickle cell trait, affect disease risk; or environmental factors like poverty or diet that affect some groups more than others.

Ummm. . . race and ancestry are pretty much the same thing, and if genetic differences aren’t innate qualities, I don’t know what they are. What Velasquez-Manoff means by “innate qualities” is probably stuff like IQ or behavior, controversial topics about which we have little firm knowledge with respect to ancestry. What we’re talking about here are genetic differences that may have an effect on the incidence of diseases like sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs, (Valasquez-Manoff’s tortuous attempt to avoid concluding that sickle-cell anemia is more frequent in populations descended from West Africa then from other populations is amusing.)

Here’s more:

What’s new today is that modern genetic science has revealed just how arbitrary the old race categories — Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid and so on — really are. Yes, there is variation in the human family, but there are few sharp divides where one set of traits ends and another begins. Rather, traits exist in gradients, reaching high frequency in some populations and lower frequency in others. As the geneticist Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania reminded me, human beings are too young as a species, too promiscuous and full of wanderlust, always moving and mixing, for the kind of separation and differentiation that would cause true speciation to have occurred.

Well, these categories are not completely arbitrary: they just don’t pick out the totality of genetically recognizable groups. And yes, there aren’t sharp divides between groups and traits (or genes), for we see groupings within groupings—exactly what you’d expect if humans formed populations that were semi-isolated after they left Africa.  And who on earth even claims that there are “true species” in humans? No scientist I know! We’re not reproductively incompatible or isolated, which is the criterion for true species. We simply differ in our traits and genes, which is what we call “subspecies” or “ecotypes.” Remember, genetic differences among ethnic groups are correlated, for groups became genetically differentiated as semi-isolated populations.

Velasquez-Manoff prefers medical diagnostics based on genes rather than ancestry, apparently not realizing that these are correlated. Yes, we’d like to know everyone’s full DNA sequence for the best medical treatment, but sometimes an ancestry-based approach is better, simply because some diseases are clearly correlated with ancestry (and I recognize that there’s a conflating issue of culture, which isn’t genetic), and because in most cases we don’t know which genes are involved in disease and which variants are associated with which conditions. So these paragraphs, for instance, are confused:

The takeaway from studies like this is that rather than relying on race, doctors should focus on the genes important to whatever puzzle they face — an approach often called “precision” or “personalized” medicine. The idea is that tailoring treatment to the patient’s genotype, not to skin color or hair texture, would improve outcomes.

Consider the case of kidney disease. Scientists have found that African-Americans fare worse than whites when it comes to this illness. The assumption had long been that some environmental factor explained the difference. But in recent years, scientists have linked certain variants of a gene called APOL1 to worse kidney-related outcomes. Those variants are enriched in people of African ancestry. Girish N. Nadkarni, a kidney specialist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, explained to me that scientists think this may be because those variants protect against the sleeping sickness endemic to some parts of Africa.

Yes, it would be good to have the APOL1 genotype of all patients, but look: here the author admits that there are genetic differences between groups that correlate with their ancestry. They just don’t show a perfect correlation. Further, there may be other genetic differences between groups beyond APOL1 that affect kidney disease, but we don’t yet know about them, and so might be able to use self-identified ancestry as a correlate of those unknown differences. This is why my own doctor, Alex Lickerman, uses “race” as a guide to diagnosing prostate cancer. He’s quoted in the article:

Alex Lickerman, founder of ImagineMD, a medical concierge service in Chicago, cites the example of prostate cancer. For unclear reasons, African-Americans have a higher risk than whites. One test for the cancer, which looks at prostate-specific antigen, is controversial because it can yield false positives. Some recommend against using it at all.

But Dr. Lickerman says that merely being aware that African-Americans have a higher disease risk impels him to order the test more often for African-American patients. To his mind, the elevated risk of cancer outweighs the risk of a false positive. “Race is a crude marker, but it’s a usable marker,” he said. In that respect, it is no different from other factors doctors consider, most of which are based on imperfect studies of limited size and scope, and need to be weighed carefully.

Note that Lickerman recognizes race as a sign of ancestry that is correlated with genetic differences—and the genes for prostate cancer probably haven’t all been identified. It’s better in this case to partly base tests on race than to do nothing in the absence of genotypic data. What Lickerman is doing here, which seems sensible, involves recognizing the reality of “race”.

When discussing the higher incidence of hypertension in African-Americans than in white Americans, Velasquez implicates racism. He doesn’t seem to recognize two things: that hypertension in American blacks might be due to other cultural differences, like diet, or that it might be due to an interaction between evolved black/white genetic differences with factors like diet. The author simply wants to flaunt his virtue by singling out racism as the likely cause:

African-Americans, who on average have about 20 percent European ancestry, suffer from high blood pressure more often than whites do. Some studies indicate that among African-Americans, the darker one’s skin, the greater the risk of high blood pressure. The pattern could indicate that African ancestry is responsible.

Yet Africans in Africa don’t generally have high blood pressure. So some argue that the experience of having dark skin in the United States — of experiencing racism — is what’s raising blood pressure. In this case, Dr. Burchard says, even though race is a social construct, the best way to talk about the associated disease risk may be to use the labels, since the societal baggage that comes with them may be causing the problem.

Note that Velasquez-Manoff fails to present alternative but even more credible hypotheses (I don’t think that experiencing racism is a more likely explanation for hypertension than is diet, for instance). At any rate, he fails to lay out both genetic and interactive explanations. And the notion that “race is a social construct” is simply ridiculous. If it were, Lickerman’s ministrations would be futile. If race were purely a social construct, ancestry and ethnicity wouldn’t be correlated with any biological factors.

Of course we’d like to have the DNA profile of all patients, but we’d also like more research on exactly which genes are associated with disease. Such genes, though, may be hard to identify because they have tiny effects. In the meantime, there are occasions, as with sickle-cell anemia and prostate cancer, that ethnicity, or “race”, or “self-identified race”, can be used meaningfully in a medical way. And that, of course, means that ethnicity is not a “social construct”, for it has biological meaning. That’s the point that the Winegard et al. article tries to make.

Velasquez-Manoff’s virtue signaling and distaste for any concept of race is most evident in his last paragraph:

Science seeks to categorize nature, to sort it into discrete groupings to better understand it. That is one way to comprehend the race concept: as an honest scientific attempt at understanding human variation. The problem is, the concept is imprecise. It has repeatedly slid toward pseudoscience and has become a major divider of humanity. Now, at a time when we desperately need ways to come together, there are scientists — intellectual descendants of the very people who helped give us the race concept—who want to retire it.

It’s pretty clear that he doesn’t like race because it “divides humanity.”  Well, it partitions humanity on the basis of genetic difference, but that’s not what he means. He means that genetic differences cause friction between people. The solution to that is not to pretend that the genetic differences don’t exist, but to stop them from creating bigotry and hatred.

And if you want, discard the word “race”—but let’s keep “ancestry,” shall we?. No biggie, since “ancestry” is a term that enlightened biologists see as closely associated with “race”. Should we retire the concept of “ancestry”, too? If so, then why does Velasquez-Manoff mention it repeatedly?

I have to say that when I talked to Velasquez-Manoff and tried to tell him about the more modern concept of “fuzzy” race that encompasses a variety of nested populations that differ genetically, I could sense that he didn’t like what I was saying. And at the time I got a bad feeling about what he was going to write, as I could sense him ignoring what I was trying to tell him. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that he was determined at the outset to downplay the significance of genetic differences between ethnic groups. And that is surely reflected in his piece, which I found notably unenlightening and genetically ignorant, even if it was politically correct.