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The Elusive Target of Biological Differences

Catarina I. Kiefe, PhD,MD

JAMA. 2002;287:2138-2139.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Blacks live shorter lives than whites in US society. A newborn in the United States in 1998 had an average life expectancy of 77.3 years if white, 71.3 if black.¹ Furthermore, although life expectancy has increased by about 3 years overall since 1980, the 6-year disadvantage for blacks has not changed. This lower life expectancy, hence earlier mortality, for blacks is a reality that holds true overall but also, with alarming uniformity, across sex, age, and disease subgroups. Potential explanations for this disparity fall into 2 broad categories: environmental/societal/behavioral vs biological/genetic. Underlying the latter is the concept that race/ethnicity is, at least in part, a biological construct.

In this issue of THE JOURNAL, Bach et al² present evidence that they interpret as biological differences not explaining the ethnic differences that have been observed in cancer mortality ever since collection of statistics on cancer deaths started. Bach . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham and Birmingham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Birmingham.

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