Abstract
Precision medicine offers a precious opportunity to change clinical practice and disrupt medicine’s reliance on crude racial, ethnic, or ancestral categories by focusing on an individual’s unique genetic, environmental, and lifestyle characteristics. However, precision medicine and the genomic studies that are its cornerstone have thus far failed to account for human diversity. This failure is made clearer when looking at multiracial individuals who encapsulate a mosaic of different genetic ancestries. This presentation argues that precision medicine is failing multiracial individuals and relies on the same forms of crude categorization it seeks to unsettle. I provide examples of where multiracial individuals are being failed in genomic research, research translation, and public health. Until the scientific community creates inclusive solutions for multiracial individuals in medical genomics, precision medicine will continue to fall short in its aims. I conclude by offering a way more just and equitable path forwards for precision medicine.
