European ancestry increases breast cancer risk among Latinas

Dr. Fejerman,

I read this news report regarding your research into breast cancer among Latinas and felt compelled to question some of the basic assumptions forming your research.

The underlying premise of your study is that Latinas are a genetically distinct, though admittedly "admixed," racial group distinct from black or white women. However, I would argue this assumption is faulty for a number of reasons.

Your study explores at length the percentage of European and indigenous genetic ancestry among Latinas. Nowhere in the article I read about your study did I find an attempt to define the term Latina. What in medical terms constitutes a "Latina?"

Were these women selected on the basis of their last names? Were they chosen by their country of origin? Either choice poses questionable medical assumptions. In essence, you are concluding that every person with a Spanish surname or who originated in a Spanish-speaking country is part of distinct genetic category. Would you make that same assumption if a person had an Anglo name and came from an English-speaking country? By the logic you have apparently used to define Latinas, a white Englishwoman, a black Jamaican and an Australian aborigine would be part of a single "Britannic" genetic group.

There is a second significant flaw in your study: It limits the definition of Latina to someone of "admixed" European and indigenous ancestry.

This blanket assumption of all Latinas as mongrels is not only offensive, it is also inaccurate. In Uruguay and Argentina, for example, the percentage of the population of European descent is greater than in the United States. What's more, if you were to test the DNA of the U.S. population with Anglo surnames, you would likely find a significant presence of indigenous ancestry as well.

The definition of a Latina as someone of admixed European and indigenous ancestry suffers yet another flaw: This assumption totally ignores the presence of Latinas of African descent who make up roughly 18 percent of Latin America's population. (In contrast, African-Americans make up 12 percent of the U.S. population.) If the women you selected for your study were a true representative sample of "Latinas" surely some of them would have shown some indication of African ancestry in their DNA.

Dr. Fejerman, I realize you did not invent the term Latina or Hispanic and are doing your best to extend medical care to a segment of the U.S. population which studies have shown do not receive the same quality of medical treatment as mainstream Americans. I do not question your motives or your good intentions. But in trying to help a disadvantaged group, you are also perpetuating many of the misconceptions that feed fundamental prejudices.

The people of Latin America are not a single race. Studies like yours, while well intended, help foster this illusion.

I hope you will offer an explanation of these questions, not just to me, but to the journalists who have carried the story of your study to the public and the scientific community.

Respectfully,
Raul Ramos y Sanchez

Selected groups come from "Warmer Climates" and may have developed resistance or compliance!

The article itself, published in Cancer Research in the December issue is very clear about its assumptions and none of the assumptions that Raul Ramos y Sanchez states in his comments are actually made in the study. Sometimes news based on scientific articles can be misleading since it is not possible to write a short news piece with the same level of detail that the scientific article has. My recomendation would be to read the article in Cancer Research to see what are the true assumptions of the study and what the conclusions mean. I think that this sould be the approach that everyone should have whenever they read news on a study that calls their attention for whatever reason.

Laura