Race in the Microbiome

Abstract

Microbiome science asserts humans are made up of more microbial cells and genes than human ones, and that each person harbors their own unique microbial population. Human microbiome studies gesture toward the post-racial aspirations of personalized medicine—characterizing states of human health and illness microbially. By viewing humans as “supraorganisms” made up of millions of microbial partners, some microbiome science seems to disrupt binding historical categories often grounded in racist biology, allowing interspeciality to supersede race. But inevitably, unexamined categories of race and ethnicity surface in a myriad of studies on microbiota. This paper approaches race as a ghost variable across microbiome research and asks, what is race doing in studies of the microbiome? Why is it there, and how is it functioning? I examine this research to argue that social scientists must work with biological scientists to help put microbial differences into perspective—to investigate how microbiomes and race are entangled embodiments of the social, environmental, and biological. Ultimately, transdisciplinary collaboration is required to address racial health disparities in microbiome research without reifying race as a straightforward biological or social designation.

The human gut microbiome and health inequities

“…In this context, biomedical approaches targeting individual GM taxa and functions, as well as ecological approaches promoting the maintenance of stable and resilient GM communities, should be combined with policy interventions aimed at equalizing access to resources and environmental exposures, and adopting an anti-racist stance in health care. Achieving this goal will require collaborations between GM researchers and fields specializing in the assessment of social environments and their impacts on health, including epidemiology and health-focused fields in the social sciences (169,170), as well as medical doctors, nurses, and policymakers who can put key findings into practice. Data Availability.…”

Introducing the Microbes and Social Equity Working Group: Considering the Microbial Components of Social, Environmental, and Health Justice

“…Microbiome science must consider applications that will benefit study populations in the foreseeable future, since direct, immediate intervention is unlikely at this stage of our understanding. Thus, we support an “ethics of care” ( 58 ) that requires microbiome researchers not only to attend to current predicaments of research participants, to support meaningful infrastructural changes, and to remain alert to possible commercial exploitation ( 38 , 59 – 61 ) but also to consider that a participant’s health extends well beyond the boundaries of “skin and skull,” and to consider the microbiome as integral to the individual’s inherent functioning ( 38 , 46 , 59 – 61 ). Certainly, this complicates the ways in which we understand our own physiology ( 44 ) and calls into question our self-conception ( 62 , 63 ), our individuality ( 64 ), and, thus, some of the most central categories that we integrate into our ethical and political reasonings.…”

“…For data-driven sciences, this collaboration requires interrogating one’s own research within social contexts and existing biases ( 44 ). For example, previous work investigating microbial mechanisms of health disparities has focused on how environmental, structural, and racial politico-economic discrimination and other inequities influence microbiomes, instead of falsely assuming inherent biological differences between people of different races ( 38 ). Interventions that ignore social interactions or neglect the social determinants of health may fail to meet their goals ( 44 , 45 ).…”

Public human microbiome data dominated by highly developed countries

“…To ensure greater global equity in the benefits of microbiome research, the field should prioritize and incentivize improved global representation of microbiome samples. Importantly, this approach should be grounded in benefitting the populations and communities sampled, rather than simply using these microbiomes as a tool to improve health in North American and European countries, as others have explained (Benezra 2020;Delgado and Baedke 2021).…”