The misuse of biology in demographic research on racial/ethnic differences: A reply to van den Oord and Rowe

In an article in the August 2000 issue of Demography titled " Racial Differ ences in Birth Health Risk: A Quantitative Genetic Approach, " van den Oord and Rowe attempted to study the genetic and environmental factors contribu ting to the black/white gap in infant birth weight. Their findings indicate that this difference may be explained by shared environmental influences r ather than by fetal genes. Yet the authors insisted in their conclusions th at a strong genetic component still must play a role in determining, the ra cial gap in birth weight, if only through maternal effects. The incompatibi lity between the authors' findings and their conclusions is due largely to a weakness in their conceptualization of the relationship between race and biology. Their insistence that racial groups represent discrete genetic ent ities, coupled with a failure to account for interactions between biologica l and environmental processes, illustrates the methodological and ethical p roblems that threaten future interdisciplinary research on racial/ethnic di sparities in health.