Opinion | Should Medicine Discard Race? New York Times

My wife suffers from a rare neurological disease that is hereditary. A related disease to hers is called “Machado-Joseph Disease,” which is caused by two specific genetic changes which occurred on the island of Flores in the Portuguese Azores in roughly 1500. Johns Hopkins this year rented the fellowship hall of our church for a support group. During that event, I paid attention to whom said they suffered from SCA3 or its alias, Machado-Joseph disease. In this group of under 50, I watched as those few who were SCA3 sufferers identified themselves–they were from West Africa, South America, the Carribean, long-time white American. They have DNA in common that is far more unlikely and more important to their lives than their melanin. All of them could potentially trace their ancestry to a tiny speck of land in the North Atlantic in the early 1500’s. This is thus the year I realized, in fact, had it hammered home: race is a complete illusion and we truly are all one human family.

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