Rick Kittles, PhD, Senior Vice President of Research at Morehouse School of Medicine, Laid a Foundation with Words of Science, Wisdom, and Caution
This article is a part of our CTSC Event Recap series.
The Oxford dictionary defines “ancestry” as one’s family or ethnic descent. Ancestry is the bridge between genetics and society–oftentimes with cultural, religious or political meaning. WIth race as a social construct, scientists have argued that geography is a better determinant of human genetic differentiation than ethnicity.
We had the privilege of hosting Rick Kittles, PhD, biologist specializing in human genetics and Senior Vice President for Research at the Morehouse School of Medicine. Dr. Kittles received acclaim in the 1990s for his work in tracing the ancestry of African Americans through DNA testing.
Dr. Kittles started his talk by explaining that racial and ethnic minorities (i.e., Black, Hispanic, Asian) have a higher chance of getting variants of uncertain significance results than people who identify as white. The National Cancer Institute defines “variants of uncertain significance” as a change in a gene’s DNA sequence that has an unknown effect on a person’s health.
Ancestry can be estimated across chromosomal regions. Dr. Kittles has contributed to research that helps predict prostate cancer risk in men, who are considered high-risk, with West African ancestry as well as the relationship between West African ancestry with lung cancer risk and survival in African Americans.
Dr. Kittles provided a few key takeaways with regard to ancestry and health disparities research:
- The study of genetic ancestry and health outcomes may strongly entail both biologic and sociological factors;
- Local genetic ancestry matters;
- Be intentional with your presentation, models, and design–ancestry is contentious like race; and
- Pooled multi-ethnic samples in genetic ancestry analysis should be performed only within self-reported groups.
View Dr. Kittles’ talk in full on our YouTube channel.