A question of blood, race, and politics

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Volumn 61, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 456-491

  Kenny, Michael G ^a  

^a SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748988203     PISSN: 00225045     EISSN: 14684373     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrl003     Document Type: Review

References (200)

1. The published version of the paper is J. A. Scudder et al., "Sensitising Antigens as Factors in Blood Transfusions," Mankind Q., 1960, 1, 89-104.
2. F. H. Allen, L. K. Diamond et al., "A New Blood-Group Antigen," Nature, 1951, 167, 482.
3. b," Nature, 1951, 168, 207-8.
4. b," Nature, 1953, 171, 431.
5. a is usually about 50% in Europeans and rises to 75% in some parts of Africa, but this frequency is by no means representative of all African populations";
6. G. Daniels, Human Blood Groups (Oxford: Blackwell Science, 1995), 441.
7. R. E. Rosenfeld et al., "Anti-Jk: Three New Examples of the Isoantibody," Am. J. Clin. Pathol., 1953, 23, 1222-25, 1224.
8. A. C. Wehrwein, "Blood Expert Says Transfusion between Races May Be Perilous," N. Y. Times, 7 November 1959, A1, A3.
9. J. A. Scudder and W. D. Wigle, "Safer Transfusions through Appreciation of Variants in Blood Group Antigens in Negro and White Blood Donors," J. Natl. Med. Assoc., 1960, 52, 75-80, 76.
10. Scudder et al., "Sensitising Antigens," 90, 99.
11. Scudder and Wigle, "Safer Transfusions."
12. R. R. Race and Ruth Sanger, Blood Groups in Man, 4th ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific, 1958);
13. R. Sanger and R. R. Race, Blood Groups in Man, 5th ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1968), 331-46. It later emerged that Duffy antigens were an access point for the malarial parasite into the red blood cell, and that their absence conferred resistance to infection, and hence resistance to malaria among persons of African descent lacking them;
14. C. M. Westhoff and M. E. Reid, "Review: The Kell, Duffy, and Kidd Blood Group Systems," Immunohematology, 2004, 20, 37-49, 41;
15. G. Garratty, "Do Blood Groups Have a Biological Role," in Immunobiology of Transfusion Medicine, ed. George Garratty (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1994), 201-55, 226-27.
16. See M. Bamshad et al., "Deconstructing the Relationship between Genetics and Race," Nat. Rev. Genet., 2004, 5, 598-609, 602.
17. Scudder et al., "Sensitising Antigens," 99-100.
18. Scudder et al., "Sensitising Antigens," 99-100. Ibid.
19. Scudder and Wigle, "Safer Transfusions," 79;
20. Scudder et al., "Sensitising Antigens," 103.
21. Scudder et al., "Sensitising Antigens," 99.
22. Scudder et al., "Sensitising Antigens," Ibid., 103n5.
23. Wehrwein, "Blood Expert," A3.
24. Anon., "Seven at Columbia Doubt Peril of Bi-Racial Blood Transfusions," N. Y. Times, 10 November 1959, A49-50.
25. L. C. Dunn and T. Dobzhansky, Heredity, Race and Society (New York: New American Library, 1952);
26. E. Sinnott, L. C. Dunn, and Theodosius Dobzhansky, Principles of Genetics, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958). The latter included a chapter on "statistical inference in genetics" by another member of the Columbia group, Howard Levene, Professor of Mathematical Statistics and Biometrics.
27. Anon., "Seven at Columbia," A50. An overview of the controversy appeared in the science section of the Sunday New York Times on 15 November, outlining both Scudder et al. and the criticisms of the Columbia Seven, whom the author allowed the last word in company with an equally critical statement by the President of the American Association of Blood Banks;
28. W. L. Thurston, "New Procedure Advocated for Selection of Blood Types in Transfusions," N. Y. Times, 15 November 1959, E11.
29. W. L. Thurston, "New Procedure Advocated for Selection of Blood Types in Transfusions," N. Y. Times, 1959, E11. Ibid.
30. N. Y. Times, 10 November 1959, 50.
31. A. Montagu, Statement on Race: An Annotated Elaboration and Exposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).
32. Anon., "Race no Barrier, Blood Center Says," N. Y. Times, 12 November 1959. The Times editors placed this story next to another outlining a suit undertaken on behalf of students in a South Carolina county to be admitted to white schools.
33. S. Love, One Blood: The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 155-60.
34. National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council, "Statement Regarding an Inquiry into the Scientific Basis for Racial Separation of Blood for Transfusion," Bull. Am. Assoc. Blood Banks, March 1960, 108. The AABB editor appended the following note to the Statement: "The issue of separating blood for transfusions according to race of donor and recipient has been raised time and time again after it had been brought to the attention of the medical profession, scientists, and the general public during World War II. For this reason the preceding unequivocal and authoritative statement is of utmost importance. Its dissemination should go a long way toward removal of confusing arguments and opinions unsupported by scientific evidence which have been brought forth by proponents of racial segregation of blood for transfusions."
35. R. Giblett, "A Critique of the Theoretical Hazard of Inter vs. Intra-Racial Transfusions," Transfusion, 1961, 1, 233-37;
36. see "Special Reports: Thirteenth Annual Meeting, American Association of Blood Banks," Transfusion, 1961, 1, 44. Dr. Giblett also acknowledged the advice of Arthur Mourant, the supposed source of Scudder et al.'s "new philosophy." In 1973, South African researchers revisited Giblett's critique. They pointed out that, although South Africa required the racial labeling of blood, interracial blood transfusions were permitted. They therefore calculated the risk of exotic reactions across the range of South Africa's complex racial/ethnic mix and came up with a striking conclusion: "The calculated risk is greatest when both the donor and the recipient are Caucasoids. It is almost five times as large as that when only Negroes are involved,"
37. G. T. Nurse and T. Jenkins, "Genetically Determined Hazards of Blood Transfusion within and between Races," South African Med. J., 1973, 47, 56-61, 58-59.
38. Eloise Giblett, personal communication, 22 January 2005.
39. John Gorman, personal communication, 19 January 2005. By 1975, Dr. Gorman was Director of the Presbyterian Hospital Blood Bank and Clinical Professor of Pathology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. In that year he published The Role of the Laboratory on Hemolytic Disease of the Newborn (Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger, 1975), which focused on the detection of Rh incompatibilities and was a book aimed at providing "the technologist with background information so that he can see his work in the perspective of the clinical situation. It outlines the basic principles of blood bank tests and their relationship to the disease process itself" (ix-x).
40. See the Scudder Association website: http://www.scudder.org/history.html.
41. J. A. Scudder, Shock: Blood Studies as a Guide to Therapy (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1940).
42. J. A. Scudder, Shock: Blood Studies as a Guide to Therapy Ibid., xi;
43. see J. A. Scudder, "Practical Genetic Concepts in Modern Medicine," J. Natl. Med. Assoc., 1960, 52, 266-77, 266.
44. Karl Landsteiner was by then in New York, and he asked Scudder and Drew for "as many samples of blood as convenient." Scudder believed that, by this route, Drew had an indirect role in the discovery of the Rh blood group system; Scudder, "Practical Genetic Concepts," 267. Be that as it may, Landsteiner's associate and co-discoverer of Rh, Philip Levine, was among the Columbia Seven.
45. Theodosius Dobzhansky also took aim at this invidious action: "There must have been some persons with enough political 'pull' who wanted to have this done, in defiance of all the evidence that what matters is not the race of the donor but his individual characteristics," T. Dobzhansky, Heredity and the Nature of Man (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), 96.
46. Quoted in S. Love, One Blood, 156.
47. Scudder, "Practical Genetic Concepts," 270.
48. UPI, "Negro Scores Data on Blood-Giving," N. Y. Times, 14 November 1959, 67.
49. For Mazique's background and political activities, see F. Ridlon, A Black Physician's Struggle for Civil Rights: Edward C. Mazique, M.D. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005).
50. An early, and perhaps the first, American study to look at the blood-type differences between "Negroes" and whites was mindful of that very possibility; the authors found that the type distribution of American Negroes approximated what was then known about black Africans but, insofar as it differed, it was in the direction of American whites: "it is assumed that the change is due to intermixture with the latter," J. Lewis and D. Henderson, "The Racial Distribution of Iso-hemagglutinin Groups," J. Am. Med. Assoc., 1922, 79, 1422-24, 1424.
51. Melbourne Tapper outlines the role of Julian Lewis in developing the idea that American Negroes (as opposed to Africans) have a unique disease susceptibility - e.g., to sickle cell anemia-precisely because of their mixed race status; Tapper, "An 'Anthropathology' of the 'American Negro': Anthropology, Genetics, and the New Racial Science, 1940-1952," Soc. Hist. Med., 1997, 10, 263-89, 265.
52. Anon., "Scudder Blood Transfusion Controversy," J. Natl. Med. Assoc., 1960, 52, 56-58, 57.
53. This episode is also recounted in Ridlon, Edward Mazique, M.D., 184-88.
54. Scudder and Wigle, "Safer Transfusions," 80. As it so happens, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists was meeting at Howard University in May 1960 at the invitation of its Department of Anatomy; Scudder also presented a paper at those meetings - "The Competition between Anti-body forming Clones" - but failed to provide an abstract and never seems to have published on this topic;
55. "Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meetings of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists," Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 1961, 19, 98.
56. "Comments on Scudder Thesis," J. Natl. Med. Assoc., 1960, 52, 293-95, 294.
57. Anon., "Blood Transfusion and Race," J. Natl. Med. Assoc., 1960, 52, 280-82, 281.
58. Ridlon, Edward Mazique, 187, 351n50;
59. UPI, "Racial Blood Ban Wins," N. Y. Times, 17 February 1960, 22. A member of the opposed minority is reported as saying that, since he had AB-type blood, it wasn't in his interest to see a reduction in the pool of possible blood donors.
60. These developments were also reported in Georgia: "House Passes Blood Label Bill," Augusta Chronicle, 17 February 1960, 8. The U.S. National Red Cross left blood collection and distribution policy up to its local chapters, and the Georgia chapter reported that race-specific legislation made no difference to its current practice, since its policy was to send blood collected from Caucasian donors to white hospitals, and blood from Negro donors to Negro hospitals.
61. The only real change was that blood now had to be specifically labeled by race, rather than merely coded; "Racial Separation Already: Blood Bill Won't Affect Red Cross," Augusta Chronicle, 18 February 1960, 8-A.
62. Quoted in Ridlon, Edward Mazique, 187.
63. R. Gayre, "Editorial," Mankind Q., 1960, 1, 4.
64. R. Lynn, ed., The Scientific Study of Human Diversity (Lanham: University Press of America, 2001);
65. P. Lombardo, "'The American Breed': Nazi Eugenics and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund," Albany L. Rev., 2002, 65, 743-830;
66. M. G. Kenny, "Toward a Racial Abyss: Eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund," J. Hist. Behav. Sci., 2002, 38, 259-83;
67. W. H. Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002);
68. J. P. Rushton, "The Pioneer Fund and the Scientific Study of Human Differences," Albany L. Rev., 2002, 66, 207-62;
69. P. Lombardo, "Pioneer's Big Lie," Albany L. Rev., 2003, 66, 1125-44.
70. See Kenny, "Racial Science in Social Context: John R. Baker on Eugenics, Race, and the Public Role of the Scientist," Isis, 2004, 95, 394-419, 414-19.
71. D. A. Blackmon, "Silent Partner: How the South's Fight to Uphold Segregation Was Funded Up North," Wall Street Journal, 11 June 1999, A1, 8.
72. R. May, "Genetics and Subversion," Nation, 1960, 190, 420-22, 420. The Staff Director of HUAC, Richard Arens, turns up frequently in committee records, interviewing suspicious characters like Arthur Miller on what they knew about Communist infiltration of the unions, arts, and media. Draper's entrée to Congress had been smoothed by an influential senator sympathetic to his views on immigration restriction.
73. R. May, Nation, Ibid., 422.
74. Mankind Quarterly frequently publishes the work of Pioneer grantees, some of whom have served on its editorial board. One of the most prominent is J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario, Pioneer's current director; another major recipient, Richard Lynn, is currently on the editorial board of the Quarterly.
75. P. Mazumdar, Species and Specificity: An Interpretation of the History of Immunology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 301.
76. P. Mazumdar, Species and Specificity: An Interpretation of the History of Immunology Ibid., 121-22;
77. see also Mazumdar, Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, Its Sources and Its Critics in Britain (London: Routledge, 1992), 161-69;
78. Karl Landsteiner, "On Individual Differences in Human Blood," Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1930, http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1930/ press.html, 236, accessed 30 April 2005.
79. G. Hedrén, The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1930, Nobel Prize Committee, http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1930/press.html, accessed 30 April 2005;
80. see J. Marks, "The Legacy of Serological Studies in American Physical Anthropology," Hist. Phil. Life Sci., 1996, 18, 345-62, 346. Landsteiner, in his Nobel Lecture, had little to say about races, pure or otherwise, only stating that "I am not qualified to discuss the results of anthropological investigations on blood groups and the conclusions drawn from them . . . Nevertheless, the majority view seems to be that the behaviour of the blood groups in conjunction with other anthropological features allows us to draw conclusions regarding the relationship and origin of human races and is of some importance to anthropological research."
81. Garratty, "Do Blood Groups have a Biological Role."
82. W. Schneider, "Chance and Social Setting in the Application of the Discovery of Blood Groups," Bull. Hist. Med., 1983, 57, 545-62, 559.
83. P. Mazumdar, "Blood and Soil: The Serology of the Aryan Racial State," Bull. Hist. Med., 1990, 64, 187-219.
84. The foundational studies are T. Furukawa, "Die Erforschung der Termperamente mittels der experimentellen Blutgruppenuntersuchung," Zeitsch. angewandte Psychol., 1928, 31, 271-99;
85. "A Study of Temperament and Blood-Groups," J. Soc. Psychol., 1930, 1, 494-509.
86. See also T. Sato and Y. Watanabe, "The Furukawa Theory of Blood-type and Temperament: The Origins of a Temperament Theory during the 1920s," Jpn. J. Personality, 1995, 3, 51-65;
87. "Psychological Studies on Blood-Typing in Japan," Jpn. Psychol. Rev., 1993, 35, 234-68 (in Japanese);
88. M. Shilling, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture (Trumbull: Weatherhill, 1997), 27-30.
89. K. Wailoo, "Genetic Markers of Segregation: Sickle Cell Anemia, Thalassemia, and Racial Ideology in American Medical Writing, 1920-1950," Hist. Phil. Life Sci., 1996, 18, 305-20, 315;
90. Wailoo, "'A Disease Sui Generis': The Origins of Sickle Cell Anemia and the Emergence of Modern Clinical Research, 1904-1924," Bull. Hist. Med., 1991, 65, 185-208;
91. M. Tapper, "Interrogating Bodies: Medico-Racial Knowledge, Politics, and the Study of a Disease," Comp. Studies Soc. Hist., 1995, 37, 76-93;
92. Wailoo, Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997);
93. M. Tapper, In the Blood: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999);
94. Wailoo, Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001);
95. Tapper, "Anthropathology," 279.
96. C. Putnam, Race and Reason: A Yankee View (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1961);
97. see Tucker, Scientific Racism, 103-8. William Tucker has explored in detail Putnam's connections to the Mankind Quarterly group and to Draper's Pioneer Fund, finding that Draper himself contracted to "purchase a large number of copies" of Putnam's book;
98. W. H. Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 104, see 103-8.
99. W. H. Tucker, The Science and Politics of Racial Research (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 162-68.
100. R. Lynn, The Science of Human Diversity: A History of the Pioneer Fund (Lanham: University Press of America, 2001), 61;
101. A. S. Winston, "Science in the Service of the Far Right: Henry E. Garrett, the IAAEE, and the Liberty Lobby," J. Soc. Issues, 1998, 54, 179-210.
102. A. Shuey, The Testing of Negro Intelligence (Lynchburg: J.P. Bell, 1958);
103. see R. Lynn, Human Diversity, 92.
104. Putnam, Race and Reason, vii-viii.
105. Race and Reason, Ibid., 46.
106. Race and Reason, Ibid., 49-50.
107. P. J. Kuznick, Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 180-85;
108. E. Barkan, "Mobilizing Scientists against Nazi Racism, 1933-1939," in Bones, Bodies, Behavior: Essays on Biological Anthropology, ed. George Stocking (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 180-205;
109. Kenneth Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 127-30.
110. Dunn and Dobzhansky, Heredity, Race and Society, 130-31;
111. see M. Tapper, "Anthropathology of the American Negro," with respect to the supposed medical consequences of mixed blood.
112. Dobzhansky, Heredity and the Nature of Man, 100-13;
113. J. Beatty, "Dobzhansky and the Biology of Democracy: The Moral and Political Significance of Genetic Variation," in The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky, ed. M. B. Adams (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 195-218;
114. T. Dobzhansky, "A Bogus 'Science' of Race Prejudice," J. Hered., 1961, 52, 189-90.
115. Dobzhansky went after a subsequent Putnam tract in the same spirit: "scientists will generally recognize racist ravings for what they are, but laymen may need help in combating the poison"; "More Bogus 'Science' of Race Prejudice," J. Hered., 1968, 59, 102-4, 102.
116. T. Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics, and Man (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1955), 152.
117. Putnam, Race and Reason, 35.
118. C. Putnam, "These are the Guilty," Mankind Q., 1963, 4, 12-27, 27.
119. R. Pearson, Blood Groups and Race (London: The Clair Press, 1959 and 1966), 9-10. Pearson's language is strikingly reminiscent of the "Race and Nation" chapter in Mein Kampf.
120. For more on Pearson, see Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism.
121. D. A. Swan, G. Hawkins, et al., "The Relationship between ABO Blood Type and Factor of Personality among South Mississippi 'Anglo-Saxon' School Children," Mankind Q., 1980, 20, 205-58, 254. The original inspiration for this study came from well-known psychologist Raymond Cattell, who had concluded that "predictions can be made concerning the level of mental test performance from the blood group gene frequencies";
122. R. B. Cattell, H. B. Young, et al., "Blood Groups and Personality Traits," Am. J. Hum. Genet., 1954, 16, 397-402. Cattell himself had some interesting views on race;
123. see Tucker, Science and Politics, 239-49.
124. For Swan, see Tucker, Scientific Racism.
125. For more recent Pioneer-funded research on the relationship between blood group and personality factors, see R. T. Osborne, "Blood Group Genes and Anthropometric Measures as Predictors of Mental Ability of Blacks and Whites," Mankind Q., 1990, 30, 225-34;
126. for a review (in this case skeptical) of Japanese research, see W. Coscarelli, S. L. Stepp, and R. Lyerla, "Relationship with Decision-Making style and Personality Type," Mankind Q., 2001, 29, 307-26.
127. Wailoo, Drawing Blood, 161.
128. C. Leissig, "Roast Beef and Racial Integrity: Mississippi's Race and Reason Day," J. Miss. Hist., 1994, 56, 1-15.
129. Scudder, "Sensitising Antigens," 99.
130. W. C. Boyd, Genetics and the Races of Man: An Introduction to Modern Physical Anthropology (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1950);
131. A. E. Mourant, The Distribution of Human Blood Groups (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1954);
132. A. E. Mourant, A. C. Kopec, et al., The ABO Blood Groups: Comprehensive Tables and Maps of World Distribution (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1958).
133. W. H. Schneider, "The Rise and Fall of Sero-Anthropology," Proceedings, XXX International Congress of the History of Medicine (Düsseldorf, 1986), 719-27, 721. Pauline Mazumdar has shown that, even in Central Europe, the distribution of blood types was too confusing to be of much practical use in Nazi racial policy that instead focused on culture, language, and the traditional criteria of German physical anthropology; Mazumdar, "Blood and Soil."
134. Boyd, Genetics, 268-74. In more recent times, the population geneticists Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues have attempted - as did William Boyd - to employ comparative serology (including the distribution of Kidd-group alleles) in tracing the outlines of world population movements and affiliations. While rejecting the concept of "race," they assert that "by means of painstaking multivariate analysis, we can identify 'clusters' of populations and order them in a hierarchy that we believe represents the history of fissions in the expansion to the whole world of anatomically modern humans," but, they add, "at no level can clusters be identified with races";
135. L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, P. Menozzi, and A. Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 19;
136. for Kidd-group, see 248, 290, 335.
137. For an early step in this direction, see K. Landsteiner and P. Levine, "On the Racial Distribution of Some Agglutinable Structures of Human Blood," J. Immunol., 1929, 16, 123-31; they attempted to add determination of type M and N to studies of serological racial differences and were "led to the idea that the serological make-up of races is determined by varying combinations of a number of characteristics," 130.
138. Mourant, "Distribution," 195.
139. Boyd, Genetics, 5.
140. Montagu, Statement, 137-41.
141. See W. B. Provine, "Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing," Science, 1973, 173, 790-96;
142. B. Glass, "Geneticists Embattled: Their Stand against Rampant Eugenics and Racism in America during the 1920s and 1930s," Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., 1986, 130, 130-54;
143. Provine, "Geneticists and Race," Am. Zool., 1986, 26, 857-87.
144. American Anthropological Association, "Official Reports: American Anthropological Association Council Meeting, Friday, November 17, 1961," Am. Anthropologist, 1962, 64, 608-20, 616. Franz Boas's most publicly prominent student, Margaret Mead, was a major player in the AAA debates and a highly prominent "liberal" public figure throughout her professional life. Carleton Putnam struck back at the AAA in Race and Reality: A Search for Solutions (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1967), attempting as best he could to hoist the anthropologists on their own petards by citing seemingly inconsistent statements by professionals on the significance of race.
145. H. Margolis, "Science and Segregation: The American Anthropological Association Dips into Politics," Science, 1961, 134, 1868-69, 1869.
146. Scudder and Wigle, "Safer Transfusions," 79n1.
147. An early salvo was fired by Mexican anthropologist Juan Comas, who identified the Quarterly as "a supposedly scientific journal whose contents are the cause of profound concern . . . The racist orientation of The Mankind Quarterly deserves close and objective scrutiny." "Scientific Racism Again?" Current Anthropol., 1961, 2, 303-40, 306. Henry Garrett, who provided a rebuttal in CA, was a major target of Comas's attack, and Ruggles Gates was another; the latter cited Scudder et al. in his own response: "a recent paper of Scudder et al., in the Mankind Quarterly . . . shows that the dangers of sensitization (with a fatal result) for the Kidd, Kell or Duffy antigens are much greater when White blood is given to a Negro or Negro blood to a White";
148. Current Anthropol., Ibid., 321.
149. Dobzhansky, Heredity and the Nature of Man, 89.
150. Marks, "Legacy of Serological Studies," 354;
151. J. Marks, Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995), 132;
152. see Marks, "New Information, Enduring Questions: Race, Genetics, and Medicine in the 21st Century," Gene Watch, 2005, 18, 11-16.
153. J. H. Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New York: Free Press, 1993);
154. S. Reverby, ed., Tuskegee's Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000);
155. see S. Lederer and J. Parascandola, "Screening Syphilis: Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet Meets the Public Health Service," J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1998, 53, 345-70, 363. Yet another irony is that Scudder's 1960 audience may have included local medical workers involved in this study, which would continue on for another fourteen years.
156. E. Smith and W. Sapp, eds., Plain Talk about the Human Genome Project (Tuskegee: Tuskegee University, 1997).
157. http://clinton4.nara.gov/textonly/New/Remarks/Fri/19970516-898.html, accessed 1 April 2005.
158. International HapMap Consortium, "Integrating Ethics and Science in the International HapMap Project," Nat. Rev. Genet., 2004, 5, 467-75;
159. M. Foster and R. Sharp, "Beyond Race: Towards a Whole-Genome Perspective on Human Populations and Genetic Variation," Nat. Rev. Genet., 2004, 5, 790-95.
160. Two widely cited papers in this debate (respectively pro and con the utility of the "race" concept) are N. Risch, E. Burchard, E. Ziv, and H. Tang, "Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race and Disease," Genome Biol., 2002, 3, 1-12;
161. and J. Wilson et al., "Population Genetic Structure of Variable Drug Response," Nat. Genet., 2001, 29, 265-69.
162. See also E. Gonzales et al., "The Importance of Race and Ethnic Background in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice," N. Engl. J. Med., 2003, 348, 1170-75;
163. R. S. Schwartz, "Racial Profiling in Medical Research," N. Engl. J. Med., 2001, 244, 1392-93;
164. M. Foster and R. Sharp, "Beyond Race";
165. M. Bamshad et al., "Deconstructing the Relationship between Genetics and Race."
166. J. Kaplan and T. Bennett, "Use of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Publication," J. Am. Med. Assoc., 2003, 289, 2709-16, 2712. The full statement reads "Race/ethnicity should not be used as a proxy for genetic variation. Statements about genetic differences should be supported by evidence from gene studies. Genetic hypotheses should be firmly grounded in existing evidence, clearly stated, and rigorously tested." Aware of these debates, an article in a leading American conservative journal stresses that, although race may be an "approximate" category, it is "one with undeniable biological significance." The author suggests that much research on racial health disparities is ideologically biased in a leftward direction, thus undervaluing biology.
167. S. Satel, "Medicine's Race Problem," Policy Rev., 2001-2002, 110, 49-58.
168. For a very different view, see S. S.-J. Lee et al., "The Meanings of 'Race' in the New Genomics: Implications for Health Disparities Research," Yale J. Health Policy, Law, Ethics, 2001, 1, 33-75.
169. Some argue that, although concepts like "race" may have a passing utility as short-hand for the probable existence of clustered genetic traits, the longer-term goal is nevertheless individualized medicine, with no further need for resort to such higher-order concepts. See A. J. J. Wood, "Racial Differences in the Response to Drugs - Pointers to Genetic Differences," N. Engl. J. Med., 2001, 344, 1393-95, 1395;
170. J. F. Wilson et al., "Population Genetic Structure of Variable Drug Response," 268, 265.
171. Selected papers from which were published in a special supplement to Nat. Genet., 2004, 36.
172. P. Aldhous, "Geneticist Fears 'Race-Neutral' Studies Will Fail Ethnic Groups," Nature, 2002, 418, 355-56, 356.
173. Troy Duster points out that "pharmaceutical companies don't sell drugs to individuals; they sell drugs to markets. So part of what is going on here is a market-driven biotechnology which is trying to find a population base for its product." Quoted in D. Rotman, "Race in Medicine," Technol. Rev., 2003, 69, 68-70, 69.
174. See Lee et al., "The Meanings of 'Race,'" 57.
175. Anon., "Pharmacogenetics to Come," Nat. Genet., 2001, 29, 749.
176. R. Mougey, "The Kidd Blood Group System: Serology and Genetics," in Blood Group Systems: Duffy, Kidd, and Lutheran, ed. S. R. Pierce and C. R. Macpherson (Arlington: American Association of Blood Banks, 1988), 53-92;
177. G. Daniels, Human Blood Groups (Oxford: Blackwell Sciences, 1995), 442.
178. N. M. Irshaid et al., "Novel Alleles at the Jk Blood Group Locus Explain the Absence of the Erythrocyte Urea Transporter in European Families," Br. J. Haematol., 2002, 116, 445-53, 452. A MEDLINE search on this topic produces comparative studies of Kidd-group polymorphisms between Taiwanese, Thais, and Filipinos; Polynesians vs. Finns; between Algerians, 'Caucasoids,' and 'Negroids'; and internal comparisons among Chinese.
179. See Westhoff and Reid, "Review."
180. See Human Genetics Commission, Genes Direct: Ensuring the Effective Oversight of Genetic Tests Supplied Directly to the Public (London: Department of Health, 2003). As genomic medicine gains momentum, and as inexpensive microarray technologies make their way to the local pharmacy, a multitude of heterodox therapies can be expected to crop up alongside them, and some of those will be racially/ethnically targeted. Developments on the medical fringe therefore warrant attention - such as "live blood cell analysis," in which clients see their own blood displayed on a video monitor and have their ills diagnosed by an appropriately trained expert, or dietary regimens based on the proposition that blood type reflects evolutionary history (for example, that type O is the most ancient type, and that since ancient humans were hunter-gatherers, a high meat-content diet is indicated for their type-O descendants).
181. See G. A. Hadjipavlou, "Encounters with Live Blood Analysis: An Anthropological Perspective on an Alternative Health Practice" (M.A. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1999);
182. P. J. D'Adamo, Live Right for Your Type: The Individualized Prescription for Maximum Health, Metabolism, and Vitality at Every Stage of your Life (New York: Putnam Publishers Group, 2000).
183. Giblett, personal communication, 22 January 2005.
184. a. Dr. Giblett's pioneering statistical risk study has continued to echo since its 1961 publication, but with course corrections brought about by new findings indicating that there is in fact an enhanced risk of alloimmunization against certain minor blood-group antigens in multiple white-to-black transfusions;
185. A. Orlina et al., "Post-Transfusion Alloimmunization in Patients with Sickle Cell Disease," Am. J. Hematol., 1978, 5, 101-6, 104;
186. D. Ambruso et al., "Experience with Donors Matched for Minor Blood Group Antigens in Patients with Sickle-Cell Anemia Who Are Receiving Chronic Transfusion Therapy," Transfusion, 1987, 27, 94-98, 96.
187. E. Patten et al., "Transfusion Management of Patients with Sickle Cell Disease," Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci., 1989, 565, 446-48, 447.
188. Vichinsky, "Alloimmunization," 1621.
189. Vichinsky, "Alloimmunization," 1621. Ibid.
190. See Duster, Backdoor to Eugenics, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2003).
191. T. Duster, "Buried Alive: The Concept of Race in Science," in Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide, ed. A. H. Goodman, D. Heath, and M. S. Lindee (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 258-77, 258-59.
192. T. Duster, "Buried Alive: The Concept of Race in Science," in Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide, 258-77, Ibid.
193. American Anthropological Association, "AAA Statement on Race," Am. Anthropologist, 1999, 100, 712-13;
194. see also http://www.asnet.org/stmts/racepp.htm.
195. Duster, "Buried Alive," 261-62.
196. Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society, 131.
197. Provine, "Geneticists and Race Crossing," 796.
198. L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, "The Human Genome Diversity Project: Past, Present and Future," Nat. Rev. Genet., 2005, 6, 333-40.
199. T. Duster, "Race and Reification in Science," Science, 2005, 307, 1050-51.
200. As for the ambiguous potential of microarrays, see K.-S. Taussig, R. Rapp, and D. Heath, "Flexible Eugenics: Technologies of the Self in the Age of Genetics," in Genetic Nature/Culture, 58-76, 69. Enterprises in various parts of the world are now exploiting haplotype diversity in their search for genes related to disease or drug responsiveness.