This is a guest post by Cambria Chou-Freed, Ph.D. Candidate, UCSF Biomedical Sciences (BMS) Program

This week, I was very interested in our class discussions about how race is used as a variable in medicine/biomedical research and about the contexts in which this might exacerbate vs. combat health inequities. I especially appreciated the UCSF debates over the use of genetic ancestry vs. race in eGFR and polygenic risk score calculations. What stuck with me was the question: how can we, as scientists and physicians, feel comfortable using race as a variable in the same way we use quantitative, measurable variables (ex: blood cell or RNA transcript counts) to make research claims and clinical diagnoses? We know that race is an inaccurate proxy for genetic ancestry in many cases. Furthermore, when we want to use race as a proxy for social factors, I wonder whether in the future we will move toward incorporating other, more precise variables instead (such as to what degree a person experiences racism in their life, or what neighborhood they live in, an example given in class). As a mixed-race person, it has always made intuitive sense to me that race is not clearly defined or discrete, even when I didn’t have the words or data to back this up. Similarly to what Dr. Grubbs argued in the debate, I wonder how researchers would calculate my risk for polygenic diseases if I don’t fit accurately or precisely into their race-based model?

Another question that came up in class is how epigenetics might be used in medicine/biomedical research. Epigenetic marks are thought to encode experiences and environmental factors such as trauma and stress at the molecular level, and there is evidence that epigenetic changes to DNA can be passed on through multiple generations. Many people see epigenetics as an opportunity to study the effects of social factors such as racism on human health, and I certainly see the potential benefits of this. However, I also worry that some people will use epigenetics as the next generation of scientific evidence to back the claim of “biological differences due to race” and that a new form of discrimination could emerge as a result.