On the bright side, treatments that are tailored to an individual's genetics, rather than that of a group, have the promise of providing us with drugs that are much more effective, and with fewer side effects.

It's simultaneously funny and sad that some people will do anything to divide humanity up into neatly labelled boxes, which, more often than not, result in their own box being "better" in some way than everyone else's.

he even has eugenics-related bullshit under his picture

this man is so obsessed with race, it's incredible

it seems to be the largest source of his sense of self-worth: his genetic make up

how do people get this fucked up and sick?

Here's a first-order stab at the main positions I've observed them to take as they're slipping away from progressive nails being pounded into the deck at their prior positions:

1. Default position: Race is a mere social construct based on a folk taxonomy, what people commonly think of as "race", that has no correspondence with any scientific taxonomy, any systematic categorization based on observable characteristics, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs psychotherapy. And since, for any given trait or gene, there is "more variation within than between races", as shown by Lewontin, the psychotherapist should preferrably be some cousin of Lewontin's just to be sure you're getting the real deal. Payment is on "sliding scale".
2. When shown that people can be accurately categorized by what people commonly think of as "race" using genetic or other data they slip over to: Race is a mere social construct based on a folk taxonomy, what people commonly think of as "race", that has no correspondence with any legitimate scientific taxonomy and anyone who thinks otherwise needs psychotherapy. A legitimate scientific taxonomy is one that organizes the data without regard to a pre-existing taxonomy -- by looking for clusters in the data itself. At this point they have abadondoned Lewontin but that's ok. His main usefulness was during the the first decade of the sexual revolution when there was a frenzy feeding on nubile boomer co-eds.
3. When shown that cluster analysis of DNA markers comes up with the same taxons as the common conception of "race", they slide right over to: Well, sure there are these its not a phylogenetic taxonomy -- these clusters are not the result of shared ancestry but merely the result of things like convergent evolution and genetic drift and anyone who thinks otherwise needs psychotherapy. Yeah -- this is starting to get pretty lame but bear with me they get more lame.
4. When shown that phylogenetic cluster analysis of DNA markers comes up with the same taxons as the common concept of "race" they slip-slide over to the position (this one starts registering on the chortle-o-meter): Yes of course everyone knew that all along but you are misrepresenting our position! Our position all along has been that there is no correspondence between DNA markers (which are non-functional/selectively neutral) and functional genes and anyone who thinks otherwise needs psychotherapy!
5. Then when shown that there are drugs that are statistically a lot more likely to be a lot more effective on some races than others, the comedians now moon-walk over to: Well of course you might find a few things that correspond to functional genes that vary enough by race to be noticable during clinical trials, but these are so few and far between that you are engaging in malpractice to actually base medical practice on them -- and of course anyone who thinks otherwise... yada yada....

These guys are now actively killing people.

-------- Empty the Cities --------

The "facts" that drugs have different effects on different biology is just a smokescreen for the persistance of racial inequality. If we were truely motivated to resolve racial inequality, we would be able to smooth over these differences and just make the drugs work the same.

It is conceivable that the pharmaceutical industry, driven either by profit or prejudice, will avoid developing drugs that will be vital to a minority population.

Reluctant +1FP.

If phrenology tells us nothing else, it's that certain psychological traits can be determined by the morphology of the caranium. Therefore it only makes sense that other more holistic measures, such as region of ancestors (or race as it were) would be a useful predictor of physiological traits, like responsiveness to drugs. Indeed, phrenology was able to use such corellations to make important conclusions about psychological traits such as criminality and imbecility -- these scientific ideas are still with us today and in fact constituted much of the impetus for the development of automatic locks for upscale vehicles, so that owners of such vehicles could lock their cars from the inside without making an obvious show of it when potential criminals or terrorists approach.

Then, we should tell everyone in our drumming circle how great our herbs and roots are and that they should learn some obscure, non-mainstream form of yoga, since we were into almost a year before everyone else got into it.

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the underground motto of K5 is "I am not Egil." - superdiva

But honestly, I don't think it's possible to do that, certainly not in the forseeable future. The most likely scenario is that we will continue to see multiple drugs that treat the same disorder. The polymorphism will start to be recognized, and companies will try to make more universal drugs, and try to widen the biochemical variance between them. More importantly, MD's will take notice of this and stop telling women that it's all in their head just because the Paxil isn't working. They might start to realize that different people metabolize drugs differently, and they will switch drugs, preferably to one with many chemical differences.

It's not just the companies, it's the public research field as well. You don't get funding to research a gene that is found in 0.01% of the population and plays a role in a disease that impacts 1 out of every 10000.

Also, there are a few spelling errors. Did this sit in the edit queue at all?

And most "new" drugs are simply close analogues of existing drugs designed to work around patent expiration or existing substances marketed for a different purpose or, as in this case, combined in different ways.

so you decide to dynamite the dam above the valley, flooding the whole valley, and sure enough, you kill the rabbit

what the hell am i talking about?

rabbit=disease

valley=race

river=genetics

see, genetics DOES effect how well a drug works

and there is overlap between race and genetics, but it is very macroscopic: it's all generalizations, fuzzy: 55% of blacks this, 75% of asians that, 35% of caucasians that

in other words, you want to pinpoint the river, where the rabbit is at, and you say "well, 70% of the river is in the valley, so if i pinpoint the valley, i can probably get the rabbit"

but what you really want is to be able to pinpoint the river, and only the river, and achieve 100% accuracy

this is drugs tailored to your genetic makeup, rather than your race

and that's the real future of pharmaceuticals and genomics

race is just a very rough approximation, a quick rule of thumb, a stop gap measure, until we get better at pinpointing genetics quickly and easily and cheaply

for example, if you wanted to treat lactose intolerance, race is a good rough approximation of making generalizations about that

but it's all very rough and imprecise: caucasians are generally not lactose intolerant, southeast asians generally are

wouldn't it be better to just test for the presence of the lactase gene being turned on in the gut?

and in fact, it is

it's just expensive and time consuming and difficult to do that in today's world