Tina K. Sacks, PhD, Katie Savin, MSW, and Quenette L. Walton, PhD, LCSW
Would you question health decisions made by a 37-year old Black woman whose great-grandfather died in the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee?
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(2):E183-188. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.183.
In the same way that we learn about normal variations in blood pressure, we need to learn about “normal” variations in sexual interests and practices. We want to avoid clueless questions or unintentionally inflammatory statements.
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.
An attempt to investigate correlations between race, attitudes, and contraceptive use did not find meaningful associations between race and attitudes about birth control or pregnancy that could influence contraceptive choice.