This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (9)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA

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.

RELATED ARTICLE

Survival of Blacks and Whites After a Cancer Diagnosis
Peter B. Bach, Deborah Schrag, Otis W. Brawley, Aaron Galaznik, Sofia Yakren, and Colin B. Begg
JAMA. 2002;287(16):2106-2113.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Increasing ethnic differences in mortality in Estonia after the collapse of the Soviet Union
Leinsalu et al.
J. Epidemiol. Community Health 2004;58:583-589.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Reducing Health Disparities: From Theory to Practice
Prothrow-Stith et al.
Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 2003;12:256S-260.
FULL TEXT  

The Role of State Health Agencies in Cancer Prevention and Control: Lessons Learned from Massachusetts
Koh and Walker
Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 2003;12:261S-268.
FULL TEXT