At issue is a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning, making them look healthier than they really were — all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently. That race-based equation could delay diagnosis of organ failure and evaluation for a transplant, exacerbating other disparities that already make Black patients more at risk of needing a new kidney but less likely to get one.
A few years ago, the National Kidney Foundation and American Society of Nephrology prodded laboratories to switch to race-free equations in calculating kidney function. Then the U.S. organ transplant network ordered hospitals to use only race-neutral test results in adding new patients to the kidney waiting list.
Dr. Martha Pavlakis (of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and former chair of the network’s kidney committee) calls what happened next an attempt at restorative justice: The transplant network gave hospitals a year to uncover which Black kidney candidates could have qualified for a new kidney sooner if not for the race-based test — and adjust their waiting time to make up for it. That lookback continues for each newly listed Black patient to see if they, too, should have been referred sooner.
Thank you for the information! It was not my intent to echo any such refrain. If you don’t mind, would you point me to some good survey papers which might expand my understanding of the topic? (physiology and human phenotypes?) May not be the right terminology for apparent race but I’ll lean on your expertise to interpret my meaning.
I will do my best! :)
There are a couple different concepts at-play here, and finding a single resource that summarizes everything I mentioned would be quite difficult. Moreover, given the information dissemination problem I mentioned, you’d be hard-pressed to find a non-academic description of this stuff (I.e. written for a non-biological or social researcher audience)…
But, I don’t think that should prevent anyone interested in trying to learn more!
Here’s some papers that discuss some of the issues at play here:
Is the cell really a machine?, discusses some of the issues with relying too much on genetics/molecule scale biology knowledge for determining the emergent nature of traits/phenotypes (with specific respect to the machine model of the cell… This paper is heavy on molecular biology)
Conceptualizations of Race: Essentialism and Constructivism, a sociological overview informed by clinical and biological research discussing constructivist vs essentialist conceptions of race (heavy on sociology)
Addressing Racism in Human Genetics and Genomics Education , reviews several papers specifically addressing the information dissemination problem I mentioned, going back to the “source”, which is education. This paper focuses on studies in undergraduate biology education but others are looking at education in at the k-12 level, also.
If you wanted to do a database search yourself, some keywords I’d use would be: race essentialism, genetic essentialism, (really just “essentialism” would get you somewhere), race in biology education, race in medicine