The article highlights how race-based clinical algorithms in medicine can lead to misdiagnosis and unnecessary treatments for people of different races. It shares a personal story of a woman, Vanessa Apea, who was wrongly diagnosed with leukemia due to a low white blood cell count common in people of African or Middle Eastern ancestry. The article emphasizes the need to move away from using race in medical algorithms and provides an example of a genetic variant, Duffy null, that can explain low white blood cell counts in certain populations. The article advocates for using diverse reference norms and updating medical practices to avoid unnecessary harm to patients.
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‘We falsely medicalized a true normal variant’
