US Patent Office Requires Race Based Testing of Medicine

Race reemerges in debate over ‘personalized medicine’

... Jonathan Kahn, a law professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., discovered the patent rejections when he began sifting through applications, prompted by a 2008 patent office presentation that raised the race issue.

“Constructions of race as genetic are not only scientifically flawed, they are socially dangerous, opening the door to new forms of discrimination or the misallocation of scarce resources needed to address real health disparities,” Kahn wrote in a report in the journal Nature Biotechnology in May.

One patent examiner, for example, rejected an application for a colorectal cancer risk test because it had been studied only among Hispanic men.

“The idea that Hispanic is a coherent genetic category is just silly,” Kahn said in a telephone interview. “It’s one of the most diverse — genetically and culturally and historically — populations you can find. The idea that it is genetically definable and distinct is just irresponsible.”

Similarly, in 2009, an examiner rejected a patent for a test for a propensity for prostate cancer because it did not specify the risk the variation posed among different races, Kahn found.

And in 2010, an examiner denied a patent for a test for a genetic marker for asthma and eczema because it was vetted only in whites and Asians.

The prostate cancer and asthma rulings were reversed on appeal. But the colorectal cancer applicant narrowed the application to win approval.

“There’s no telling how many people will just give in and use race in a way that the scientists clearly do not think is an appropriate way to use race,” Kahn said.

The entire US governments use of race is bizarre.  You must ignore until you must take it into account.  Either way, someone is out there getting ready to ding you for your actions.  Of course, race is a fuzzy object, and of course, it has genetic and therefore medical consequences.   Deal with it.