Category: reason

The Government Should Stop Mandating the Use of “Race” in Medical and Scientific Studies

I was asked to contribute to a symposium on race, racism, and administrative law at Notice and Comment, the blog of the Yale Journal of Regulation. Given my current research on the American law of race, some of which I have blogged here, I had a lot to choose from; the most egregious forms of racial classification in the U.S. are largely the product of administrative decisions, rather than legislation. I ultimately decided to write about how the FDA and NIH require the use of ridiculously unscientific “racial” categories, adopted by the OMB for entirely different purposes in 1977, in biomedical research, and why this use of “race” should be abolished. Here’s a taste, but you can read the whole thing at this link:

As of this writing, the federal government is considering using race and ethnicity to allocate access to a new Coronavirus vaccine to combat Covid-19 when one becomes available. More specifically, the government is considering giving preference to African Americans and Latinos because they have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

There are obvious dangers to allocating medical resources by race … especially in a politically sensitive an area such as vaccines, where the public is already all-too-prone to accept various conspiracy theories and quackery that leads them to oppose vaccination. Instead of expanding the use of race in this way, science and medicine should be moving away from considering race and ethnicity at all.

Unfortunately, the FDA and NIH have mandated the use of race and ethnicity since the late 1990s. As a result of this mandate, the use of race has become so common in the scientific and medical communities that most people in the field fail to consider whether there is any justification for doing so. As one scientist reports, “we don’t tend … to think a lot about that [race] variable, what it means, how it’s defined, how it’s being used. We just sort of use it blindly.”

This is very unfortunate, because, in addition to other problems discussed below, the FDA and NIH mandated that the “race variable’ be based on the arbitrary (but now standard in American life) racial and ethnic classifications established by the Office of Management and Budget in 1977 for civil rights enforcement purposes. At the time, the OMB warned that the “classifications should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature.” This did not stop the FDA and NIH from institutionalizing them into medical and scientific research….

Any discussion of race in science and medicine must start with the recognition that variations in DNA that may have scientific or medical implications are not specific to race, as such, but to geographical distance between different populations. Additionally, there is no known example of polymorphism that is found exclusively in any particular “racial” group….

Even if at one time race may have been useful as a crude proxy for genetic heterogeneity, as DNA testing has become more available and much less expensive, race is a poor substitute for looking at actual discernible genetic differences between people. “Pooling people in race silos,” an editorial in Nature Biotechnology declared, “is akin to zoologists grouping racoons, tigers, and okapis on the basis that they are all stripey.”…

The OMB category of Asian, meanwhile, is absurdly non-specific and unscientific. It includes people with origins everywhere from the Philippines to the Indian subcontinent. There are vast differences among the various ethnic groups that comprise the two billion or so people who live within the Indian subcontinent, much less between South Asians and East Asians.

Hispanic/Latino is an even more problematic category. Latinos’ origins can be any combination of African, Asian, European, and Indigenous. Nor are they culturally homogenous. There is no reason to believe that data about Dominican residents of New York City is applicable to indigenous Mexican farm workers in California….

[S]upport for the idea that we should allow the government to use research based on arbitrary, scientifically ridiculous OMB racial categories to allocate medical resources to people based on those categories seems both fantastical and an unjustified triumph of unscientific racialist thinking. Unfortunately, this is what NIH’s and FDA’s imposition of the OMB categories into scientific research has wrought.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3f2rfEM
via IFTTT

The View from Inside Portland’s Federal Courthouse

Most media coverage of the protests and riots in Portland (and other cities) is from the vantage point of those outside federal properties, in and among the protesters. Many of these reports characterize the protests as “peaceful” or “largely” so.

The AP’s Mike Balsamo has posted a valuable twitter thread on his experience inside the federal courthouse in Portland. From this vantage point, the protests are anything but peaceful. As Balsamo documents, the federal agents inside the courthouse have come under assault on a nightly basis. It is worth a read.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/39vhwFE
via IFTTT

Are These the Folks You Want Policing Your City?

It may well be necessary to deploy federal personnel in some cities to protect courthouses and other federal properties. The federal government has the authority and responsibility to protect federal property. There are also legitimate federal interests in enforcing federal law (though federal law should itself not exceed constitutional limits nor impinge on state interests).

If federal agents are going to be dispatched to various cities to enforce federal law, they should still be expected to follow the law and respect constitutional rights. On that score, there are good reasons to believe that some federal agencies are more responsible and accountable than others. The Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is the nation’s largest civilian law enforcement agency, but it a,so appears to be the least disciplined and least accountable.

Just how bad is the CBP? This amicus brief filed on behalf of former CBP officials paints a very disturbing picture of an agency that is out of control, and is either unable or unwilling to discipline rogue agents.

[T]he Border Patrol has become increasingly militarized since 2001, with some agents comparing their role to that of the U.S. Marine Corps—even though the Border Patrol is not part of the military, and is instead a civilian law enforcement agency. Combined with inadequate field training on appropriate uses of force, these factors have led to an environment in which Border Patrol agents have unnecessarily employed lethal force on the U.S.-Mexico border.

When excessive force incidents occur, internal government investigations suffer from systemic problems. The agency with the most direct interest in the investigation—CBP—can only undertake an investigation if another agency declines. And agents maintain a culture of protectionism that thwarts investigations even when they are undertaken.

As the brief documents, the CBP does not adequately screen or trains new hires, and misconduct is rampant. Even when CBP officers resort to lethal force without adequate justification, little is done about it.

As I said above, it may be necessary for the federal government to deploy agents to protect federal property, courthouses in particular. But not just any federal agents will do, and the CBP are the last people who should be patrolling the streets of our cities.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2X2hb8y
via IFTTT

Firing of Hungarian Newspaper Editor Stokes Press Freedom Fears

Hungary Index

The editor of Index, Hungary’s largest independent news site, was fired on Wednesday, sparking fears that the country’s increasingly authoritarian government is encroaching on one of the country’s few remaining independent news outlets. On Friday, Index‘s editorial board and 70 of its staffers resigned to protest the dismissal.

László Bodolai, CEO of Index‘s parent organization, says he fired Szabolcs Dull because the editor had leaked plans for a major company reorganization and failed to control newsroom tensions. (The reorganization proposal would outsource certain functions of the editorial board to external companies.) Bodolai claims the drama was scaring off advertisers, leading to a drop in revenue.

Critics note that the pro-government businessman Miklós Vaszily purchased Indamedia, which sells Index‘s advertising, earlier this year. Vaszily manages the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA), a government-linked media conglomerate that has consolidated control over most of the country’s news outlets. In 2014, the previously independent news site Origo became a government mouthpiece under Vaszily’s leadership.

Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party does not control the country’s press directly. But that’s not unusual for the so-called “new autocrats” that arose after the collapse of the USSR. In their 2010 book Competitive Authoritarianism, Lucan Way and Steven Levitsky argue that under such regimes, “major media outlets are linked to the governing party—via proxy ownership, patronage, and other illicit means.” KESMA operates on similar principles. The organization is owned by a government-affiliated media magnate, and its advisory board consists of a pro-government think tank director, a former Fidesz candidate, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s former lawyer.

Hungary has recently experienced a marked decline in press freedom. Reporters Without Borders ranks the country just 89th in its global 2019 Press Freedom Index, calling the government’s media control “unprecedented in an E.U. member state.” (When Orban took office in 2010, Hungary was ranked 23rd.) Marius Dragomir of the Center for Media, Data and Society estimated in 2017 that the Hungarian government controls 90 percent of the country’s media, making independent news sources an increasingly rare commodity.

After the Index‘s reorganization plan was released, Dull moved the site’s independence barometer from “Independent” to “In Danger,” writing that the outlet “is under such external pressure that could spell out the end of our editorial staff as we know it.” The barometer was created two years ago, following a partial change in the site’s ownership, to inform readers whether Index‘s independence was being compromised. A letter from Index newsroom staff claims that Bodolai has “tried to force us to move the barometer back into the green zone.” The “reason for Dull’s dismissal,” the letter adds, “was that he made it clear that he will not yield to blackmail.”

For his part, Badalai insists that “the political independence of Index is not at risk” and the reorganization plan was rejected by upper management.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3hE0U1p
via IFTTT

The Government Should Stop Mandating the Use of “Race” in Medical and Scientific Studies

I was asked to contribute to a symposium on race, racism, and administrative law at Notice and Comment, the blog of the Yale Journal of Regulation. Given my current research on the American law of race, some of which I have blogged here, I had a lot to choose from; the most egregious forms of racial classification in the U.S. are largely the product of administrative decisions, rather than legislation. I ultimately decided to write about how the FDA and NIH require the use of ridiculously unscientific “racial” categories, adopted by the OMB for entirely different purposes in 1977, in biomedical research, and why this use of “race” should be abolished. Here’s a taste, but you can read the whole thing at this link:

As of this writing, the federal government is considering using race and ethnicity to allocate access to a new Coronavirus vaccine to combat Covid-19 when one becomes available. More specifically, the government is considering giving preference to African Americans and Latinos because they have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

There are obvious dangers to allocating medical resources by race … especially in a politically sensitive an area such as vaccines, where the public is already all-too-prone to accept various conspiracy theories and quackery that leads them to oppose vaccination. Instead of expanding the use of race in this way, science and medicine should be moving away from considering race and ethnicity at all.

Unfortunately, the FDA and NIH have mandated the use of race and ethnicity since the late 1990s. As a result of this mandate, the use of race has become so common in the scientific and medical communities that most people in the field fail to consider whether there is any justification for doing so. As one scientist reports, “we don’t tend … to think a lot about that [race] variable, what it means, how it’s defined, how it’s being used. We just sort of use it blindly.”

This is very unfortunate, because, in addition to other problems discussed below, the FDA and NIH mandated that the “race variable’ be based on the arbitrary (but now standard in American life) racial and ethnic classifications established by the Office of Management and Budget in 1977 for civil rights enforcement purposes. At the time, the OMB warned that the “classifications should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature.” This did not stop the FDA and NIH from institutionalizing them into medical and scientific research….

Any discussion of race in science and medicine must start with the recognition that variations in DNA that may have scientific or medical implications are not specific to race, as such, but to geographical distance between different populations. Additionally, there is no known example of polymorphism that is found exclusively in any particular “racial” group….

Even if at one time race may have been useful as a crude proxy for genetic heterogeneity, as DNA testing has become more available and much less expensive, race is a poor substitute for looking at actual discernible genetic differences between people. “Pooling people in race silos,” an editorial in Nature Biotechnology declared, “is akin to zoologists grouping racoons, tigers, and okapis on the basis that they are all stripey.”…

The OMB category of Asian, meanwhile, is absurdly non-specific and unscientific. It includes people with origins everywhere from the Philippines to the Indian subcontinent. There are vast differences among the various ethnic groups that comprise the two billion or so people who live within the Indian subcontinent, much less between South Asians and East Asians.

Hispanic/Latino is an even more problematic category. Latinos’ origins can be any combination of African, Asian, European, and Indigenous. Nor are they culturally homogenous. There is no reason to believe that data about Dominican residents of New York City is applicable to indigenous Mexican farm workers in California….

[S]upport for the idea that we should allow the government to use research based on arbitrary, scientifically ridiculous OMB racial categories to allocate medical resources to people based on those categories seems both fantastical and an unjustified triumph of unscientific racialist thinking. Unfortunately, this is what NIH’s and FDA’s imposition of the OMB categories into scientific research has wrought.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3f2rfEM
via IFTTT

The View from Inside Portland’s Federal Courthouse

Most media coverage of the protests and riots in Portland (and other cities) is from the vantage point of those outside federal properties, in and among the protesters. Many of these reports characterize the protests as “peaceful” or “largely” so.

The AP’s Mike Balsamo has posted a valuable twitter thread on his experience inside the federal courthouse in Portland. From this vantage point, the protests are anything but peaceful. As Balsamo documents, the federal agents inside the courthouse have come under assault on a nightly basis. It is worth a read.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/39vhwFE
via IFTTT

Are These the Folks You Want Policing Your City?

It may well be necessary to deploy federal personnel in some cities to protect courthouses and other federal properties. The federal government has the authority and responsibility to protect federal property. There are also legitimate federal interests in enforcing federal law (though federal law should itself not exceed constitutional limits nor impinge on state interests).

If federal agents are going to be dispatched to various cities to enforce federal law, they should still be expected to follow the law and respect constitutional rights. On that score, there are good reasons to believe that some federal agencies are more responsible and accountable than others. The Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is the nation’s largest civilian law enforcement agency, but it a,so appears to be the least disciplined and least accountable.

Just how bad is the CBP? This amicus brief filed on behalf of former CBP officials paints a very disturbing picture of an agency that is out of control, and is either unable or unwilling to discipline rogue agents.

[T]he Border Patrol has become increasingly militarized since 2001, with some agents comparing their role to that of the U.S. Marine Corps—even though the Border Patrol is not part of the military, and is instead a civilian law enforcement agency. Combined with inadequate field training on appropriate uses of force, these factors have led to an environment in which Border Patrol agents have unnecessarily employed lethal force on the U.S.-Mexico border.

When excessive force incidents occur, internal government investigations suffer from systemic problems. The agency with the most direct interest in the investigation—CBP—can only undertake an investigation if another agency declines. And agents maintain a culture of protectionism that thwarts investigations even when they are undertaken.

As the brief documents, the CBP does not adequately screen or trains new hires, and misconduct is rampant. Even when CBP officers resort to lethal force without adequate justification, little is done about it.

As I said above, it may be necessary for the federal government to deploy agents to protect federal property, courthouses in particular. But not just any federal agents will do, and the CBP are the last people who should be patrolling the streets of our cities.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2X2hb8y
via IFTTT

Firing of Hungarian Newspaper Editor Stokes Press Freedom Fears

Hungary Index

The editor of Index, Hungary’s largest independent news site, was fired on Wednesday, sparking fears that the country’s increasingly authoritarian government is encroaching on one of the country’s few remaining independent news outlets. On Friday, Index‘s editorial board and 70 of its staffers resigned to protest the dismissal.

László Bodolai, CEO of Index‘s parent organization, says he fired Szabolcs Dull because the editor had leaked plans for a major company reorganization and failed to control newsroom tensions. (The reorganization proposal would outsource certain functions of the editorial board to external companies.) Bodolai claims the drama was scaring off advertisers, leading to a drop in revenue.

Critics note that the pro-government businessman Miklós Vaszily purchased Indamedia, which sells Index‘s advertising, earlier this year. Vaszily manages the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA), a government-linked media conglomerate that has consolidated control over most of the country’s news outlets. In 2014, the previously independent news site Origo became a government mouthpiece under Vaszily’s leadership.

Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party does not control the country’s press directly. But that’s not unusual for the so-called “new autocrats” that arose after the collapse of the USSR. In their 2010 book Competitive Authoritarianism, Lucan Way and Steven Levitsky argue that under such regimes, “major media outlets are linked to the governing party—via proxy ownership, patronage, and other illicit means.” KESMA operates on similar principles. The organization is owned by a government-affiliated media magnate, and its advisory board consists of a pro-government think tank director, a former Fidesz candidate, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s former lawyer.

Hungary has recently experienced a marked decline in press freedom. Reporters Without Borders ranks the country just 89th in its global 2019 Press Freedom Index, calling the government’s media control “unprecedented in an E.U. member state.” (When Orban took office in 2010, Hungary was ranked 23rd.) Marius Dragomir of the Center for Media, Data and Society estimated in 2017 that the Hungarian government controls 90 percent of the country’s media, making independent news sources an increasingly rare commodity.

After the Index‘s reorganization plan was released, Dull moved the site’s independence barometer from “Independent” to “In Danger,” writing that the outlet “is under such external pressure that could spell out the end of our editorial staff as we know it.” The barometer was created two years ago, following a partial change in the site’s ownership, to inform readers whether Index‘s independence was being compromised. A letter from Index newsroom staff claims that Bodolai has “tried to force us to move the barometer back into the green zone.” The “reason for Dull’s dismissal,” the letter adds, “was that he made it clear that he will not yield to blackmail.”

For his part, Badalai insists that “the political independence of Index is not at risk” and the reorganization plan was rejected by upper management.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3hE0U1p
via IFTTT

What Have You Been Reading? Listening To? Watching?

I’ve been much enjoying David Black’s Harry Gilmour novels, about a young British submariner during World War II. It’s not my usual genre (I tend to read science fiction and fantasy), but it’s very nicely done.

I also recently finished Martha Wells’ latest in the Murderbot Diaries series of novels and novellas. The titular hero is a cyborg security unit in a far future; the books are fresh, fun, and engaging, and Wells is good at creating nonhuman but emotionally engaging characters (as in her Books of the Raksura series).

I’m rewatching the iZombie series with my wife (who hadn’t seen it before), and it’s as good the second time around. The short plot summary is: Young doctor turns zombie, gets a job at a morgue for obvious reasons, finds that eating a brain temporarily gives her some of the dead person’s memories and character traits, uses this to help a police officer solve murders. But what makes it work is the engaging set of characters (see if you can guess my favorite), coupled with the five-season story arc; let’s just say that a lot changes over those five seasons.

I haven’t been listening to much music recently, and the new items on my playlist are Russian songs by DDT (the one about the wreck of the Kursk, plus three about war: Умирали пацаны, Господь нас уважает, and Война бывает детская; Russian singer-songwriters, at least back to Bulat Okudzhava, have written much more really good material about war than I’ve heard in English). I realize that this isn’t much use to most of our readers.

Please feel free, though, to post your recommendations in any genre and medium. I think it’s more fun, and less likely to lead to repetition if I post this query again, if you focus on what you’ve been reading, watching, or listening to recently; but don’t feel tied down to that if you’re going through a dry spell.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/32Ysmmh
via IFTTT

What Have You Been Reading? Listening To? Watching?

I’ve been much enjoying David Black’s Harry Gilmour novels, about a young British submariner during World War II. It’s not my usual genre (I tend to read science fiction and fantasy), but it’s very nicely done.

I also recently finished Martha Wells’ latest in the Murderbot Diaries series of novels and novellas. The titular hero is a cyborg security unit in a far future; the books are fresh, fun, and engaging, and Wells is good at creating nonhuman but emotionally engaging characters (as in her Books of the Raksura series).

I’m rewatching the iZombie series with my wife (who hadn’t seen it before), and it’s as good the second time around. The short plot summary is: Young doctor turns zombie, gets a job at a morgue for obvious reasons, finds that eating a brain temporarily gives her some of the dead person’s memories and character traits, uses this to help a police officer solve murders. But what makes it work is the engaging set of characters (see if you can guess my favorite), coupled with the five-season story arc; let’s just say that a lot changes over those five seasons.

I haven’t been listening to much music recently, and the new items on my playlist are Russian songs by DDT (the one about the wreck of the Kursk, plus three about war: Умирали пацаны, Господь нас уважает, and Война бывает детская; Russian singer-songwriters, at least back to Bulat Okudzhava, have written much more really good material about war than I’ve heard in English). I realize that this isn’t much use to most of our readers.

Please feel free, though, to post your recommendations in any genre and medium. I think it’s more fun, and less likely to lead to repetition if I post this query again, if you focus on what you’ve been reading, watching, or listening to recently; but don’t feel tied down to that if you’re going through a dry spell.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/32Ysmmh
via IFTTT