Lessons from History: Why Race and Ethnicity Have Played a Major Role in Biomedical Research

Abstract

Perhaps it has always been so, but certainly in the post-Enlightenment era there are inevitable linkages between the fields of law, medicine, and science. Each of these realms of activity is embedded in the social milieu of the era, with practitioners emerging from families, communities, regions, and nations bearing deep unexamined assumptions about what is natural and normal. Equally important, these fields’ theoretical accounts of natural behavior will tend to dovetail and fit each other's – most especially as they pertain to the grand social issues of the period.For the last century and a half, a conversation with a cross-section of lawyers, scientists, and physicians at any given historical juncture would produce a remarkable pattern, consistently repeated: There would be strong enthusiasm for the idea that the “current state of knowledge and practice” is both objective and transcends the current social milieu.