This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (2)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Dermatology, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In a recent editorial, Dr Williams¹ challenges the biologic validity of the concept of race, usually defined in North America and Europe in terms of skin color. He goes on to suggest that dermatologist investigators describe the subjects of their research in terms of "self-nominated ethnic group" rather than race or arbitrary classifications such as Asian/Pacific Islander.

For much of medicine, classification of patients according to externally apparent physical characteristics such as skin color is probably most relevant when the clinician is considering how signs of disease, response to treatment, and prognosis are influenced by social factors, such as access to health care, that are undeniably impacted by "race."² I would argue, however, that dermatology is the one discipline of medicine in which the relationship between race and manifestations of disease is a legitimate subject for scientific inquiry. Obviously race, defined in terms of skin color, is one of the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

Race vs Ethnicity in Dermatology—Reply
Hywel C. Williams
Arch Dermatol. 2003;139(4):540.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT