Race, Genetic Variation, and the Haplotype Mapping Project

• Author: Pilar N. Ossorio
• Position: J.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Law
• Pages: 131-143

J.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Law & Bioethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Law School and Medical School. This work is based upon a live presentation made on February 6, 2004, and does not necessarily reflect events and changes thereafter.

Page131

We have heard an overview of the Haplotype Mapping Project ("HapMap Project") and about the Project's sampling strategy. During its first phase, the Project will collect and analyze samples from 270 people.¹ One group from whom samples will be collected is the Yoruba people living in Nigeria. The Yoruba are members of a tribal and language group. The Project will also collect samples from Han people in China. The Han are one of fifty-four ethnic groups recognized by the Chinese government.²

Additional samples from Chinese immigrants in Denver, Colorado (U.S.), may also be included. Another set of samples will be collected from Japanese people who live in and around Tokyo. Researchers believe that individuals from many regions of Japan will be included in this sampling. Finally, researchers will study samples collected from Mormons who live in Utah (U.S.), and whose biological samples were already in a repository at the Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH).³

Organizers plan a second phase for the Project, during which they intend to sample several additional populations. These will likely include: a group from Kenya; another as yet undefined African group; Mexican-Americans in California; Asian-Indians in Texas (an immigrant community primarily from Gujarat, India); African-Americans in Oakland, California; Italians, probably in Italy; Finnish people, probably in Finland; and perhaps Moroccans. Page132

Work with some of these groups, such as Mexican-Americans, is already underway.

From the description above it should be obvious that the HapMap sampling does not draw from commensurate types of groups. Among other things, the groups differ with respect to the likely degree of shared ancestry within each one. They differ in the extent to which members share a cultural affiliation or language. Han people, for instance, may speak any one of several languages, including Cantonese and Mandarin, languages which are linguistically farther apart than Spanish and Italian. The initial HapMap sampling was designed to study patterns of genetic variation among people from three well-separated points on what most scientists believe is a geographic gradient of human genetic variation around the world. Secondarily, the sampling was done by convenience_it reflects the availability of scientists who were eager to participate and technically capable of conducting HapMap research, the existence of governments or other parties willing to fund the research, and the prior existence of samples for which new consent could be obtained without undue burden on participants or researchers.

When introduced to the HapMap Project, many people hear Yoruba, Han, Japanese, and Utah Mormons and think Black, Asian, and White. They say, "You are sampling three races." Some ask, "Where are the Native Americans?" In early discussions, project organizers and advisors suspected that we would have to contend with people's inclinations to over- generalize, for instance, to view one sample of a single tribal group in Nigeria as representing an entire race of black people. Nevertheless, the degree to which the HapMap sampling strategy resonates with folk notions of race, and perhaps reinforces these notions or enhances their salience and significance, has surprised me. In a different world, the Project might have had the time and resources to begin with samples from groups that did not fit neatly into racial categories, such as people from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, some group or groups from India, some group or groups from Indonesia or the Philippians, several groups of Africans, and groups of American Indians/Alaskan Natives.

An alternative sampling approach would, however, have opened up different fronts for criticism. Sampling from groups that do not fit neatly into racial categories could have left the Project open to the charge that researchers were spending large sums of money to create maps that might not be the most useful for the greatest numbers of people in the world. Furthermore, Page133 sampling that included indigenous people, or people from smaller, less-industrialized countries, could have been viewed as a pernicious attempt to transfer biological resources from the haveless to the have-mores, an attempt by the wealthier nations and scientists to plunder from the less-wealthy.

Questions about sample descriptors are intimately tied to sample collection. In community engagements associated with the HapMap Project, investigators asked potential participants, "How would you like to be described? Are there racial or ethnic descriptors that researchers should use or avoid? What geographic descriptors would be best? What additional information should be included to describe you and the specimens derived from you?" Sample descriptors are both an ethical and technical scientific issue. Descriptors are pertinent to the meaning of any data generated--who do the samples represent, what type of representation does this sampling constitute, what generalizations and conclusions can legitimately be drawn from the data generated using these samples? The choice of descriptors may also influence people's tendency to view the sampled groups in racial terms.

So, sampling by race is not what most HapMap Project organizers thought they were doing, but that is how the Project is often perceived. Some pundits wonder whether the HapMap will find genetic categories that coincide with folk notions of race, whether the Project will reinforce some people's mistaken belief that there are separate, distinct, biological categories of humans. Will the Project alter or disrupt personal identities? Will it change prevailing, popular concepts of race? These questions can be situated within a decade-long debate that continues to rage in the biomedical sciences literature, about whether or how race should be used as a variable. Numerous articles in major journals attempt to elucidate the proper use of race in biomedical science and medicine, or attempt to clarify the meaning of data in which race was used as a variable.⁴ This scientific dispute is not primarily Page134 about the quality or validity of the data; rather, it is about the interpretation and meaning of the data. What kinds of knowledge should or could existing data produce?

Unfortunately, the "race in science" question is often formulated as a "binary trap," an argument framed so that each disputant must take one of two mutually exclusive positions--that race is always an important and useful variable when collecting and analyzing data on humans, or that race is never a useful or appropriate variable. People line up behind one of these categorical positions and battle it out with opponents.

There are several important and unexamined assumptions behind the race-in-science debate. Perhaps the most important assumption is that the reality or existence of race can be adjudicated using genetic data--we will find "The Answer" to questions of whether human races exist by sampling more populations and looking at more loci. A second assumption is that, if we do not find an answer to the race question in genetic data, then we should not be using race as a demographic variable in biomedical research or health care. If race is not "genetically real" then it has no meaning and no place in research or medicine. I would like to challenge both of these assumptions.

Prior to discussing the assumptions, however, it is useful to ask what most people, including most scientists, mean when they use the term "race." Why would people think that we could find race in our genes or in collections of haplotypes? There is a large body of scholarship detailing people's different conceptions of race, and the ways in which race is deployed to achieve certain goals in Page135 society.⁵ In the U.S., we all grow up with folk notions of race, according to which races are distinct categories of people. These racial categories are treated as fixed and stable, reflective of essential, intrinsic, pervasive properties of persons. Race-based divisions in society are believed to reflect natural divisions. When we perceive race, we are perceiving an asocial feature of reality. Although attempts to define race or delineate racial groups typically flounder on the shoals of over- or under-inclusivity, like pornography, most people "know it when they see it." Part of the reasoning behind the race-in-science debate is that if we view race as an asocial quality of the world, of our biological selves, then we should be able to measure, characterize, and delineate it by using the proper scientific tools for studying human biology, the tools of biomedical science.

Folk notions of race developed prior to modern molecular...