Among Blacks and Hispanics, mistrust, wariness, and stigma emerged as the strongest predictors of willingness to participate in genetic research. This pattern remained even after stratifying by age and education and is consistent with earlier research, which has emphasized this robust association found among Blacks at all socioeconomic levels (Furr, 2002; Laskey et al., 2003; McQuillan et al., 2003). The promise of genetics as a potential tool for more effective detection and prevention of serious disorders represents a double-edged sword, an idea that has not been lost on health research professionals and laypersons. The usual research practice of relying on self-reported racial categories, combined with differential patterns of disease etiologies and outcome reflected among these categories, has raised questions in the minds of some scientists, as to the ultimate purpose and consequence of genetic research. Similarly, for Blacks, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, many of these concerns evoke images of a kind of science that is rooted in eugenics, and hail back to historical research projects that used questionable methodologies – the result of which rationalized the division of
