Witzig R
Ann Intern Med. 1996 Oct 15;125(8):675-9. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-125-8-199610150-00008.
The term "race" has many definitions, ranging from a family unit to a species, but in common and medical usage, defining "race" has meant separating Homo sapiens into three to six groups. This division of Homo sapiens into race taxons started in the 18th century, when the sciences of genetics and evolutionary biology were not yet invented. These disciplines have since shown that human race taxonomy has no scientific basis. Race categories are social constructs, that is, concepts created from prevailing social perceptions without scientific evidence. Despite modern proof that race is arbitrary biological fiction, racial taxons are still used widely in medical teaching, practice, and research. Human diversity is inconsistently taught in medical schools and erratically presented in medical texts. Race taxons have been "medicalized"; that is, race groupings have been legitimized by their use in medical literature and practice as acceptable descriptive labels that are integral to the proper diagnosis and treatment of disease in humans. Assumptions about disease that are made because a race has been assigned can result in important negative consequences for individual patients and inaccurate genetic inferences for populations. In contrast, ethnicity is a concept that incorporates social, religious, linguistic, dietary, and other variables to identify individual persons and populations. Ethnicity may be able to impart clinical clues to diagnosis if the clinician taking the history is well informed and open minded. Ethnic boundaries are dynamic and imprecise, and a strict methodical approach to ethnicity that is equal to the approach required for the study of other variables is necessary if the concept of ethnicity is to be clinically useful.
“种族”一词有多种定义，范围从一个家族单位到一个物种，但在一般用法和医学用法中，定义“种族”意味着将智人分为三到六个群体。将智人划分为种族分类单元始于18世纪，当时遗传学和进化生物学尚未发明。从那以后，这些学科表明人类种族分类没有科学依据。种族类别是社会建构，也就是说，是基于普遍的社会认知创造出来的概念，没有科学证据。尽管现代证据表明种族是随意的生物学虚构，但种族分类单元仍在医学教学、实践和研究中广泛使用。医学院对人类多样性的教学不一致，医学教材中的呈现也不稳定。种族分类单元已被“医学化”；也就是说，种族分组通过在医学文献和实践中的使用而被合法化，成为可接受的描述性标签，是人类疾病正确诊断和治疗不可或缺的一部分。因为一个人被归为某个种族而对疾病做出的假设可能会给个体患者带来重要的负面后果，也会对人群做出不准确的基因推断。相比之下，族裔是一个包含社会、宗教、语言、饮食和其他变量的概念，用于识别个人和人群。如果采集病史的临床医生知识渊博且思想开放，族裔可能能够为诊断提供临床线索。族裔界限是动态且不精确的，如果族裔概念要在临床上有用，就需要一种严格且有条理的方法来研究族裔，这种方法要等同于研究其他变量所需的方法。
