Connections between racism and dehumanization have immediate, lethal, deleterious, longer-term consequences. Lessons from Nazi eugenics and human experimentation still apply.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(1):E64-69. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.64.
The social institutions of medicine and the state have a complex history of interaction in which doctors have been the originators of political ideals, goals, and social change but equally often have found themselves to be instruments of political authority.
Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.