This is particularly egregious because apparently Moderna felt the need to ensure sufficient representation of Hispanic Americans. Even if you buy the dubious notion that there is a significant chance that vaccines will have significantly different effects by “race,” what race are Hispanics supposed to be, exactly? The average American Hispanic is about 3/4 European by descent, based on DNA studies. Essentially, then, Moderna allowed tens of thousands of people to die to ensure that “enough” white people who happen to have Spanish-speaking ancestors were included.
Like many stupidities, the very unscientific focus in biomedical research on having subjects that match official American racial categories is the product of government policy. Even if, unlike me, you believe in “race” as a biological concept likely to have significant medical consequences, our American civil rights/affirmative action categories don’t make any sense in that regard For example, we put Caucasian people from India in the same “racial” category as East Asians such as Chinese and Austronesians such as Filipinos. Indians and most Filipinos are not genetically close to East Asians, but are 40% of the “Asian American” population. When medical statistics are reported about “Asian Americans,” we have no idea how things broke down among Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, and other groups, or even whether and to what extent the different groups were represented.
A chapter of my in-progress book on American racial classification (preview here) will discuss this in detail, but a shorter version <a href=”https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/two-decades-ago-the-fda-and-nih-mandated-the-use-of-race-to-categorize-subjects-and-report-results-in-medical-and-scientific-research-they-oversee-it-was-a-huge-mistake-by-david-e-bernstein/”>can be found here</a>.
Serious question: Why did I only hear about this today? Why wasn’t there mass outrage when this was reported in September?
[cross-posted on Instapundit]
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