Embracing personal and community empowerment

Abstract

"Thirty years ago, researchers from an American group collected blood and DNA samples from Indian Amazon tribes and sold it to scientists around the world for $85 a sample. In 1996, another team came to collect more blood samples in exchange to medicine. Recently, Karitiana and other Amazon tribes have decided to demand compensation and to stop the distribution of their blood and DNA by American private companies (Rohter, 2007). Similarly, during the 1990s, researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health indicated that Ashkenazi Jews had an extremely strong history of breast cancer. This was the first genetic mutation positively associated with cancer risk in a particular ethnic group. Some leaders within Ashkenazi Jewish community have expressed concerns that these research findings linking a racial or ethnic population to a disease or disorder might stigmatize the group involved or the Jewish community (Hodge and Harris, 2001). "