Fatal invention

Full title: Fatal invention: How science, politics, and big business recreate race in the twenty-first century

Author: Dorothy Roberts

Genre: Nonfiction

Original publication date: June 2011

Book Description (from Good Reads): A decade after the Human Genome Project proved that human beings are not naturally divided by race, the emerging fields of personalized medicine, reproductive technologies, genetic genealogy, and DNA databanks are attempting to resuscitate race as a biological category written in our genes. In this provocative analysis, leading legal scholar and social critic Dorothy Roberts argues that America is once again at the brink of a virulent outbreak of classifying population by race. By searching for differences at the molecular level, a new race-based science is obscuring racism in our society and legitimizing state brutality against communities of color at a time when America claims to be post-racial.
Moving from an account of the evolution of race—proving that it has always been a mutable and socially defined political division supported by mainstream science—Roberts delves deep into the current debates, interrogating the newest science and biotechnology, interviewing its researchers, and exposing the political consequences obscured by the focus on genetic difference. Fatal Invention is a provocative call for us to affirm our common humanity.

Thoughts:

This work was an eye-opening experience. I was very surprised when the information about race susceptibility to certain illness, virus, pathogens and certain health conditions have been developed and reported in investigations.

I went to university for a degree in QFB in English biologist pharmaceutical chemist so I did see a lot of these examples, we studied the different virus and most common medications and as part of our theory we always got percentages telling us how more probably certain races have to present certain health problems, how some races are more susceptible to certain viruses or pathogens.

This is a lie because of the way people (scientist) report finding based on race is not based on the genetic investigation but on the political definition each of the team has race division or on the geographical distribution of the people participating in the study.

The reasons to design races more susceptible to certain health conditions seem so poor. how can medical research magazines allow such thing to happen? And yet it has been going on for years!

The book shows examples and a lot of them are irrefutable, the race percentages for diseases for the response to certain meds are flawed and should not be used for medicine or pharmaceutical treatments. It was obtained using a bad method, there is no real genetic or biological base for the claims.

This is definitely a book difficult to get through if you have been living the last few years of your life with a lie, with a wrong ideology especially when it touches the subjects I thought I was more knowledgeable and I was dictating my professional and even giving advice based on that knowledge of race more susceptible to certain illness and pathogens. I feel such a fake!

I could have been wrong in a lot of claims I made i several health-related issues. F***, even in the recent issue with COVI-19 I was falling in the common error that said white European and Asian people were more susceptible for it due to the lovely stats that say so that I learned in school when studying basic of Coronaviruses constitute the subfamily Orthocoronavirinae, in the family Coronaviridae, order Nidovirales, and realm Riboviria. 

Now how can I be sure this is a good indicator and use this to create any theory if the "race" definition used to create the stat is relative and subjective. Subjectivity is what we must eradicate in serious research!

I feel lied to and ignorant in topics which I thought myself above common knowledge and worse still it is something that will be hard to change, just like I was taught this, hundreds of thousands of people who work in the pharmaceutical industry, researchers, health care providers, and biological oriented perfusionists are currently being taught the same erroneous stats and they will go on to perform their duties for years based on them.

Additional to this people have been using genetic racial profile and discrimination in forensic matters in a criminal investigation. 

This book felt heavy, but not sure if its because full of references to several works in research example of wrongly used race in many different aspects, forensic, anthropological, assisted pregnancy, medical treatments, diagnosis of a sickness, health services provided and limited from people, reclamation of rights based on "race" ancestry or refusal of benefits on the same very subjective and ever changeable assignation of race, medical research, and many other aspects.

This is not a light read at all but something everyone should read, not only heath related professions, people, in general, should read it, we need to have this eye-opening event on our life so we don't fall into the wormhole of acceptance wrong theories in the aspect that can affect us, especially health-related situations. 

Again this is a book that is not easy to get through, but please try it. I found it in Scribd in audiobook and digital format, read a bit a day but it is a very important topic to be aware of.