‘They Not Like Us’: How Black Folks Can Get the Right Medications for ‘Us’

For decades we’ve joked about the differences between Black folks and White folks…”They” don’t season their food, “We” season everything. There are so many cultural differences, but why aren’t we asking if we’re physically or medically different? I know you’ve seen the posts on social media saying “’Us’ Black people are genetically different” or “Black folks, ‘they’ been lying to us about our high blood pressure!” The posts go on to provide a misinformed list of medications that are said to be “poisonous” to our bodies. These posts have many of us Black folks asking…”Is this true, are we genetically different?”…” Why are they making medicines that don’t work for us?” Let’s try to answer these questions.  When it comes to being genetically different science teaches us that humans share 99.6 to 99.9 percent of their DNA.  Science also indicates there are more genetic variations within races than between races. A 1997 analysis of enzyme variants found that there was only 7 percent genetic variation between Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid racial groups.  Though science teaches us that there are very few genetic differences between races it also teaches us that among these are something called polymorphisms that can result in...