The New York Times editorial board is happy because cardiologists are paying attention to racial differences in responses to pharmacological treatments. The Times encourages the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve a drug aimed at a single racial group–something the FDA has never done before.

Fair enough.

Naturally, the Times can’t leave its readers with the impression that it endorses the view that there are physiological differences between the races. So near the end of the editorial, we get this pablum: “race is too superficial and subjective a concept, mostly based on skin color, to match up well with any underlying genetic or physiological differences that may affect how an individual responds to a disease or a drug treatment. ”

That sounds a lot like what the American Anthropological Association said in 1998:

The concept of race is a social and cultural construction….Race simply cannot be tested or proven scientifically….It is clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. The concept of `race’ has no validity…in the human species.

Either race is a legitimiate scientific classification or it isn’t. Sorry, Times, but you can’t have it both ways.

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