Pharmacogenetics: Using science to reduce racial bias in pain management?

The medical community stands at an important crossroads and must move towards a more biologically based approach to health care if it hopes to dismantle systemic racism and ensure equitable care to all patients. Currently, systemic racism in health care harms patients of color, as evidenced by healthcare disparities for people of color during the COVID pandemic. The pandemic and other recent movements in medicine, such as eliminating race from equations used to estimate kidney function, have raised greater awareness in the medical community about the illegitimacy of race as a biologic construct and its use for directing medical care. These events also provide an opportunity to address the racial bias inherent to certain aspects of health care. Opiate prescribing is a classic example of where race issues introduce inequity. This article will discuss race and opiate prescribing and how a pharmacogenetic-based approach may help address some of the healthcare disparities resulting from raced-based medicine and the systemic racism present in our current healthcare system.