Cooper R, David R
J Health Polit Policy Law. 1986 Spring;11(1):97-116. doi: 10.1215/03616878-11-1-97.
The category of race is widely used in public health. Although its significance may be clear-cut in some practical situations, an adequate theoretical construct for the concept of race does not exist. Public health appears to lag far behind the other biological sciences in the effort to grapple with the idea of race and its implications for the nature-nurture question. This paper outlines the current anthropological and social perspective on race, and applies this view to problems of disease epidemiology. It is proposed that uncritical use of the traditional biological concept of race has distorted etiological thinking in public health and has proven an obstacle in the development of effective intervention strategies. The pragmatism of medicine and its isolation from social science may account for much of this backwardness.
种族类别在公共卫生领域被广泛使用。尽管在某些实际情况下其意义可能清晰明了，但目前并不存在一个适用于种族概念的充分理论架构。在努力应对种族概念及其对先天与后天问题的影响方面，公共卫生似乎远远落后于其他生物科学。本文概述了当前关于种族的人类学和社会观点，并将此观点应用于疾病流行病学问题。有人提出，不加批判地使用传统的生物学种族概念扭曲了公共卫生领域的病因学思维，并且已证明是有效干预策略发展的障碍。医学的实用主义及其与社会科学的脱节可能是造成这种落后状况的主要原因。
