Forensic DNA Studies Increases Inequality Among Ethnic Races

Forensic DNA Studies Increases Inequality Among Ethnic Races

There are growing issues concerning health and forensic DNA databases reflecting and indicating structural disparity and inequality in biomedical study and research.

The extent and coverage of genome information can be seen to be uneven by race and class, thus creating digital divide among data gathered for genomic studies.

Samples tested for most DNA involved researches over the past decade had come mostly from individuals of European descent. Other DNA samples from individuals of Asian, Latino, African and aboriginal ethnic groups are given less importance as compared to the European DNA sample.

The growing forensic DNA databases mirrors racial disparity and inequality among most studies and researches over the years. This resulted in the unequal production of knowledge among other ethnic race regarding medical conditions, genome variation and human health. Scientists have advocated the idea of mandating studies and researches to widely include in their samples diverse ethnic and racial background especially for funded studies.

This has then paved way for politicians in the United States to institute legislations in mandating funded studies to give the same level of importance to all people whatever race or color in the years 1993 and 2000. But still most of the recent studies concentrate more on getting samples of Europeans; giving a negative connotation that European race is far superior compared to any other ethnic race.

Posted by George Daniels on Thursday October 13 2011, 6:43 PM EST. Ref: P.A. Chow-White, Troy Duster. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0