Biology, race and politics explored in upcoming Chancellor’s LecturePosted in Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, United States on 2012-12-02 03:14Z by Steven |
Biology, race and politics explored in upcoming Chancellor’s Lecture
Vanderbilt News
Vanderbilt University
2012-10-10
Kara Furlong
Is race a biological category written in our genes? Or are genomic scientists and biomedical researchers mistakenly using race to explain away health disparities among different population groups?
Dorothy Roberts, the Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, will explore this issue in an upcoming Chancellor’s Lecture at Vanderbilt University. Her talk, titled “Fatal Invention: The New Biopolitics of Race,” is scheduled from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30, in Vanderbilt’s Sarratt Cinema…
…Roberts is the author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century. A book signing and reception will precede her lecture from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the Sarratt Cinema Lobby.
An acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law, Roberts pored over scores of scientific studies and interviewed dozens of geneticists whose work claims that race is visible in our genes. As a result, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are tailoring medications and other patented products to treat illnesses seemingly prevalent among certain populations.
Roberts argues that race is and always has been a political system, that health disparities exist because of social inequalities, and to further the myth that race is a biological category does irreparable damage to social progress in the United States…
…In July 2012, Roberts became the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania with joint appointments in the Department of Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. From 1998 to 2012, she was a professor of law, African American studies and sociology at Northwestern University…
Read the entire article here.