This article draws on Duster’s ideas about the genomic revolution as a backdoor to eugenics to examine the potential of this last type of research—research focused on genetic bases for racial differences in disease outcomes or risk—to exacerbate racism by increasing public belief in essential racial differences. The following excerpts from an Associated Press article illustrate how results of these studies are typically reported in the news media: A newly located gene that triggers inherited prostate cancer appears to be especially common among black men and may explain their heavy burden of this disease. Prostate cancer . . . occurs about one-third more often among blacks than whites and is more aggressively fatal in blacks, too. Some suspect that genetic factors may play a role in this difference. Now, scientists have preliminary evidence of what one of these genetic triggers might be. Last November, researchers announced they had pinpointed the location of a gene, which they dubbed HPC1, that appears to cause about one-third of all inherited prostate cancer. . . . In a presentation Tuesday at the American Association
