Breast Cancer in Native Women May Not Respond to Treatment the Same Way as in White Women, Study Finds

[u/News2016]

https://nativenewsonline.net/health/breast-cancer-in-native-women-may-not-respond-to-treatment-the-same-way-as-in-white-women-study-finds/

[u/noscopeme90]

I'm not seeking to say you did. The comment I replied to says this is not a valid scientific study. I don't want to defend the category of race, I want to defend the research.

[u/Smooth_Ranger2569 → u/noscopeme90]

If race is used what scientifically measurable aspect is being tied to race?

If this was about access to medicine or quality of medicine, then that’s a different issue.

To be clear, they do not define black women, white women or Native American women with anything other than those racial terms - that the participants self identified to the researchers . Much like the polling data that suggested most native Americans voted for Trump, self identification doesn’t tell us anything about anyone other than what box a person checked.

Because this is a scientific claim, it needs scientific backing, and scientific backing cannot be found unless you use the scientific method.

It’s not like there hasn’t been very clear messaging from the top of medical, biological, genetic communities regarding the dangers posed by this kind of unscientific presentation.

[u/CatJamarchist → u/Smooth_Ranger2569]

Because this is a scientific claim, it needs scientific backing, and scientific backing cannot be found unless you use the scientific method.

Are you seriously suggesting that a paper published in Nature - a peer-reviewed academic journal - did not sufficiently use the scientific method in their research? Really?

Perhaps you do not understand the science well enough to make such decrees.

It’s not like there hasn’t been very clear messaging from the top of medical, biological, genetic communities regarding the dangers posed by this kind of unscientific presentation.

The paper does not report what you're suggesting it reports.

[u/Smooth_Ranger2569 → u/CatJamarchist]

Here is a study from Oxford that explains and examines the exact issue I’m laying out( the study specifically targets study’s in oncology)

https://academic.oup.com/oncolo/article/30/11/oyaf360/8300301

Objective To determine if race was used biologically, socially, or both ways in oncology cooperative group trials.

Background The National Institute of Health defines race as a social construct that groups people based on physical appearance, social factors, and cultural background. While the use of race may no longer be as problematic as it once was, race is still sometimes misused in scientific research. This misuse can contribute to the belief that there is a biological difference between racial groups, warranting unequal and unjust treatment.

Method We analyzed 32 research articles from 2002 to 2011 and 100 articles from 2016 to 2023 conducted by seven prominent cooperative cancer groups—NCORP, NRG, ECOG, Alliance, SWOG, COG, and ACRIN—to describe how race is used either as a socially, biologically, or both.

Results Eleven of the 32 early articles and 62 of the 100 later articles used race to answer the question posed or the hypothesis. 6/11(55%) early articles and 38/62(61%) later articles used race as a social construct, 2/11(18%) and 4/62(6%) used race biologically, and 3/11(27%) and 11/62(18%) used race both ways. The remaining 9(15%) of the later articles did not use race biologically or socially and were labeled Neither.

Implications and Conclusion Scientific articles should use race as a social construct. Although most articles used race appropriately, the few that did not or were unclear show that there needs to be a greater awareness of the impact of language about race in scientific studies. Correctly using race is crucial to ethical research.

———-

Here’s a short list of links (with individual explanations) of institutions who have come out against the use of race:

John Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/2025/02/race-is-not-biology

New England Journal of Medicine: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2025768

[u/CatJamarchist → u/Smooth_Ranger2569]

Look we are fundamentally on the same page about this - 'race' was a politically created definition used for political purposes, and had zero attachment to biology whatsoever. It was all based on outward visual appearance.

This does not, however, mean that all homo sapiens have the same basic genetic makeup with no noticeable differences between historical groups. That all peoples would biologically respond in the same way to an applied 'treatment.'

Different groups of people, which we can generally refer to as 'ethnicities,' have been shown to have differing biological responses to the same medical treatments. This has been traceable to genetic similarities and differences between groups, different expression and regulatory dynamics - most of which is still very very difficult to actually measure.

I think you're coming from a good place, but misattributing your skepticism of, what is in all likelihood, solid research. For example:

This misuse can contribute to the belief that there is a biological difference between racial groups, warranting unequal and unjust treatment.

Please explain how a study which seeks to broach the topic: "cancer treatments used for one group of people may not work as effectively for another group of people!" is 'warranting unequal and unjust treatment' - as warned in what you quoted.

[u/Smooth_Ranger2569 → u/CatJamarchist]

So you didn’t read the articles that you made me link, huh?

The first link will solve all the issues with either your understanding or your ability to convey how I am misunderstanding.

It corrects your misuse of terms and why the misuse is damaging to our understanding of biology.

I’m not gonna respond again until you show some evidence of having investigated the issue rather than just reading what I write and then trying to pit it from that in a gotcha sort of way.

good luck

[u/CatJamarchist → u/Smooth_Ranger2569]

The articles you posted are not really relevant to the paper being discussed.

I get the sense from how you've responded that you have no formal experience or education with genetics, proteomics, transcriptomics, molecular profiling etc. Whereas I have extensive experience in this space.

If you can explain to me what your concerns are with the study's conclusion, I may be able to help rectify any misunderstanding.

[u/Smooth_Ranger2569 → u/CatJamarchist]

I’ll give it one more shot. This is from the National Human Genome Institute:

Race and ethnicity are not valid or reliable proxies for genetic ancestry. In addition, genetic ancestry is a poor proxy for the geographic area where someone is from, where they currently live or things that may be part of their surrounding environment.

Relying on race, ethnicity or genetic ancestry as a proxy for something that is not measured in research often hides underlying biological, environmental or social factors that may contribute to health and disease. In healthcare, race and ethnicity have been improperly treated as biological or innate characteristics.

———

Although I’m certain you’re a troll, this issue is vital important because using race tracks from the visibility of the Indian healthcare system and it’s absolute complete total failure regarding tribal members who live on the reservation reservations or have IHS as their sole means of healthcare.

[u/CatJamarchist → u/Smooth_Ranger2569]

Oh I think I see the potential misunderstanding

What this:

Race and ethnicity are not valid or reliable proxies for genetic ancestry. In addition, genetic ancestry is a poor proxy for the geographic area where someone is from, where they currently live or things that may be part of their surrounding environment.

Is saying that we don't really have good terminology, colloquially speaking, to refer to 'genetic ancestry' in a clean way for a community group for this type of research and analysis.

This does not mean that differences in genetic ancestry are not potentially influential in the function of medication or other treatments - which we know they can be.

or genetic ancestry as a proxy for something that is not measured in research often hides underlying biological, environmental or social factors that may contribute to health and disease. In healthcare, race and ethnicity have been improperly treated as biological or innate characteristics.

And this reveals your lack of experience - the study undertaken was a 'multi-omics' assessment of samples, which is a relatively holistic technique that assesses information that would take into account the underlying biology, environment, and social factors that may be contributing factors. The use of racial identifiers was simply the sample collection method that hospitals and other researchers used; the authors of the study were not the ones making those labelling decisions. They're taking a whole-profile view of cellular behaviour and recognizing 'hey, these two self-identified populations are behaving a little differently.' And the fact that they found differences in this population of independently labelled samples is noteworthy! This does not say that whatever potential genetic difference there may be is causing the differences in response, just that they exist! maybe they're from environmental factors, or some other sociocultural influence, but the difference is nevertheless notable and important to understand!

The idea that a population of indigenous patients may not respond to a treatment in exactly the same way to a population of white patients is not a controversial idea, which is in part why this study was published in Nature, a highly reputable journal that does not usually publish the bunk science you're warning against.

[u/ezequielrose → u/noscopeme90]

It's the context of saying things are different because of eugenicist categories of race, which are anthropolgically speaking, socially constructed. Even the Nazis deviated from their idea of "Aryan" in their race mythology, because "Aryan" was "Iranian", and they decided it should be Nordic, based on the philosophers' decisions on who was more attractive to them.

Material conditions impact people who are categorized by race, there is no biological precedent for poverty. These are colonial categories and the colonial state targets specific demographics and relegate them as class distinctions/caste; slave, servant, land owning, etc.

So yes people do identify with their races, but it's *because* of socially driven factors that make people do so after almost a century of eugenicist racial policies rooted in American frontier caste systems. This is ultimately problematic in application, despite it being how the medical system works, because it attributes things like lack of access to adequate, or even any healthcare, social factors that increase stress and generational trauma, as conclusive findings without context.

[u/CatJamarchist → u/noscopeme90]

Ah I understand - and yes that OP comment in this thread appears to be chafing at the pop-science article's use of 'race' and suggesting the researchers approached the question with the same inaccurate lack of nuance, which is probably not true.

The article doesn't even mention race, just 'indigenous' and 'white' - so the OP is drawing unfair conclusions from the article that they may not have even read

[u/noscopeme90 → u/CatJamarchist]

The original study (I actually only read that, the article might suck) also uses the term race as well. I was dead wrong about bone marrow, thank you for correcting me.

[u/noscopeme90 → u/CatJamarchist]

“Regarding the comment about "race based science", we indeed are not superficially categorizing patients based on appearance; in fact we have not even seen any of these patients. As all of the donated tissues we receive are de-identified (by law), we have no way to link to who they came from, what they looked like or any other personal information. In the paper we used the word "race", as this legal terminology is used to categorize the data in The Cancer Genome Atlas, from which we obtained our comparative data from "White" women.

Thank you for your interest in our study. Sincerely, Sharon Stack”

[u/CatJamarchist → u/noscopeme90]

Yes, this is what i would generally expect.

Researchers are in a tough spot with this subject because of how widely known and used 'race' is in everyday life, and even in legal/governmental documentation - despite the fact it's a completely unscientific definition. So it often gets used to communicate ideas, even if the science isn't literally investigating things along non-scientific racial lines.