Pamela Sankar

Summary Points:\nA key component of informed consent to participate in medical research is the understanding that research is not the same as treatment.\nHowever, studies have found that some research participants do not appreciate important differences between research and treatment, a phenomenon called “therapeutic misconception.”\nA consistent definition of therapeutic misconception is missing from the literature, and this hinders attempts to define its prevalence or ways to reduce it.\nThis paper proposes a new definition and describes how it can be operationalized.

Alleviating health disparities in the United States is a goal with broad support. Medical research undertaken to achieve this goal typically adopts the well-established perspective that racial discrimination and poverty are the major contributors to unequal health status. However, the suggestion is increasingly made that genetic research also has a significant role to play in alleviating this problem, which likely overstates the importance of genetics as a factor in health disparities. Overemphasis on genetics as a major explanatory factor in health disparities could lead researchers to miss factors that contribute to disparities more substantially and may also reinforce racial stereotyping, which may contribute to disparities in the first place. Arguments that promote genetics research as a way to help alleviate health disparities are augmented by several factors, including research funding initiatives and the distinct demographic patterns of health disparities in the United States.