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Categorizations of Race and Ethnicity: Useful or Outmoded in Medicine?
The issue image this month takes its theme from an essay (see Braun et al. e271) and a related perspective (see Ellison et al. e287) that explore the controversy and offer opinions on the best way to name, define, and study race and ethnicity in medicine. Human race and ethnicity, although socially determined categories, are routinely used to assign people to groups in research and clinical medicine. But if these designations are socially determined, what do "black" and "white" really mean in biomedical science and clinical medicine? Is it even possible to reach a consensus on how most accurately and sensitively to name and define race and other groupings that are subject to social tension? The editorial (see Brown et al. e288) focuses on the editorial viewpoint of this question and surveys different solutions adopted by the publishing field.
Image Credit: Race Cube Mixed by Nathan Gibbs
Citation: (2007) PLoS Medicine Issue Image | Vol. 4(9) September 2007. PLoS Med 4(9): ev04.i09. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pmed.v04.i09
Published: September 25, 2007
Copyright: © 2007 Nathan Gibbs. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
The issue image this month takes its theme from an essay (see Braun et al. e271) and a related perspective (see Ellison et al. e287) that explore the controversy and offer opinions on the best way to name, define, and study race and ethnicity in medicine. Human race and ethnicity, although socially determined categories, are routinely used to assign people to groups in research and clinical medicine. But if these designations are socially determined, what do "black" and "white" really mean in biomedical science and clinical medicine? Is it even possible to reach a consensus on how most accurately and sensitively to name and define race and other groupings that are subject to social tension? The editorial (see Brown et al. e288) focuses on the editorial viewpoint of this question and surveys different solutions adopted by the publishing field.
Image Credit: Race Cube Mixed by Nathan Gibbs