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“Increased diversity in science and medicine leads to better science.” Amid the flood of research abstracts, images, and data, one graphic caught his eye. Colored in blue hues, a map from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention depicted asthma prevalence among Latinos in the United States. A quick glance seemed to tell a simple tale: Latinos in New York, Massachusetts, and other northeastern states experienced asthma at significantly higher rates than Latinos living in other parts of the country. Except Burchard realized this wasn’t the whole story. When he studied the poster more closely, he was able to connect it with his own work on a certain mutation to the interleukin-4 gene <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10471619>. He knew that a certain variant of the gene, which he’d linked to increased asthma severity, is more common in African-Americans, and that Puerto Ricans have a deeper African ancestry than other Latinos. So this asthma hotspot in the U.S. Northeast was a reflection, in part, of the heavy Puerto Rican population in that region. “I was like, ‘I know what this is,’” Burchard tells Grist. “This is the African gene coming through Puerto Rican populations.” But we may not be getting insights like the one Burchard had at the rate we could be. After all, there’s an overall lack of people of color in science. And that’s especially true of the environmental and climate sciences. An analysis of science employment patterns <http://research.pomona.edu/sci/files/2014/11/PearsonSchuldt2014NCC.pdf> found the workforce in the medical and life sciences is the most diverse, while the makeup of environmental scientists and geologists is among the least diverse. …. According to Burchard’s own work, fewer than 5 percent of the respiratory disease research programs funded by the National Institute of Health between 1993 and 2013 involved studies that included non-white participants <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25584658> — even though they make up nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population <https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045216>. So in a subject area like asthma, there’s likely a dearth of data on groups where the illness is highly prevalent. That not only limits our understanding of the condition, but it could also impede the discovery of preventative measures and treatments. …….. According to Esteban Burchard’s colleague Sam Oh, director of epidemiology at the Asthma Collaboratory, diverse scientists have an advantage in working with communities that aren’t often part of research efforts. “If [scientists] share your culture, if they look like you,” Oh says, “you’re going to be more likely to identify with them and be more receptive.” http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/48535-green-sciences-white-people-problem _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
