Dr. Kate West (Public Health Genetics)

Fifteen years ago, Arno Motulsky, a prominent genome scientist at UW, pointed out that it is “morally wrong” to claim knowing the genome will reduce health disparities. Around that time, public interest in health disparities were on the rise, while advances from the Human Genome Project were starting to be realized. Despite the moral warning, a strong discourse has developed among genome scientists that their tools can reduce health disparities-- a claim that, we will argue, remains erroneous. In this session, we will describe the results of a critical discourse analysis that examined claims for genomics and health disparities, compared against what is known from social determinants of health literature, and genome science and epidemiology literature, highlight assumptions and areas of confusion, and consider why it is so important to get it right.