More from SAR on genetics and health

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COMMENTARY

Blaming Your Genes for Your Health Problems? Not so Fast.

By D. and Meredith L. King, Center for American

Progress. www.alternet.org/story/74298/

Today it is almost impossible to pick up a newspaper or open a

Web browser without finding an article that links a specific gene to

a certain medical condition. In fact, a simple Google search of " gene

linked " in November last year pulled up hits with genes linked to

depression risk, restless leg syndrome, autism, breast cancer,

childhood asthma, and type 1 diabetes in children. This is only on

the first page of results from a total of 30,600,000 hits.

Increasingly, genes are being linked in the mainstream press,

on the Web and also in prestigious medical journals not only to

medical conditions but also to behavioral conditions such as

narcissism, aggressiveness, and in some instances to voting behavior.

Linking disease to specific genes is becoming progressively more

common among the American public, too. The increasing perception is

that an individual's genes are the main cause of disease.

The " geneticizing " of disease is used most appropriately in

those instances where we know that genes or gene variants alone can

cause disease--such as Tay-Sachs disease, which is prevalent among

the descendants of Eastern European Jews but not just this one ethnic

group, or sickle cell anemia, which is common among Africans and

African Americans but also in other ethnic groups that have faced the

scourge of malaria over countless generations. Yet that is a real

stretch in other instances when genes are linked to health conditions

that become labeled as race specific, since this has the potential to

distort the discussion on racial health disparities.

The implication in the press is that race is the determining

factor in these and other possibly " race-based " diseases. Health

professionals and the public must be wary of oversimplifying the idea

that " x " gene equals " y " medical condition since millions of genetic

variations may exist and identifying them all, and how genes interact

with one another, has yet to be determined.

Indeed, researchers within the medical industry are wary of the

oversimplification of geneticizing disease. Consider the growing

concern among a consortium of scientists that genes are operating in

a much more complex way than previously believed. Findings from the

National Human Genome Research Institute, for example, suggest that

it may be inaccurate to say that a gene can be linked to a single

function like a predisposition to heart disease. This is critical

information since the portrayal of genetic research and disease

within the mass media often presents this information as mostly based

on simple genetic predispositions.

If one examines the research on genes, race, and disease more

closely, most research points only to a correlation of genes to

disease, which is significantly different from a gene-based disease.

Genes may predispose a person to certain health ailments, but health

conditions are a combination of environment, lifestyle impositions,

personal decisions, and access to affordable, quality health care. As

geneticist Francis observes, " associations often made between

race and disease only occasionally have anything to do with DNA [and]

most diseases are not single-locus genetic diseases and often are

quite complex, involving many genetic loci as well as environmental

factors. "

In short, it has been well documented that disease is a

combination of nature and nurture. Health care policymakers must

ensure that a correlation between a gene pattern and a medical

condition does not become a proxy for the causation of that medical

condition as some in the medical and pharmaceutical industries move

toward geneticizing and racializing disease.

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