Universal Health Standards Fit All Races

False Assumption: Clinical standards like growth charts and BMI thresholds assume a single human prototype applicable across all populations regardless of ancestry.

Summaries Written by FARAgent (AI) on February 11, 2026 · Pending Verification

For decades, medicine treated standards like WHO growth charts and BMI cutoffs as universal tools, not local guesses. That view had an honest basis. If human beings share the same basic physiology, then a single chart for “normal” child growth and a single obesity threshold promised fairness, simplicity, and comparability across countries. The WHO growth standards, built to describe how healthy children should grow under good conditions, were taken as a statement that biology converges when deprivation is removed. BMI worked the same way: one number, one rule, easy for clinics, insurers, and public health agencies to use.

Then the universal patient kept failing to appear. Clinicians plotting Daasanach or Pygmy children on standard charts could end up labeling large numbers as stunted or underweight, even when local patterns looked ordinary and healthy for those populations. South Asian families were told children were too small and sometimes pushed diets accordingly, while adults who faced high metabolic risk at lower BMI often passed as merely “normal” or “overweight” under standard thresholds. Researchers such as Wildman and colleagues proposed lower BMI cutoffs for Chinese adults; later work in England found minority ethnic groups reached type 2 diabetes risk at BMI levels below the usual line of 30. The old rule had a kernel of truth, but it increasingly looked like an average mistaken for a law of nature.

The debate now is not whether standards are useful, but whether “one size fits all” hides important ancestry-linked differences in body composition, growth tempo, and disease risk. A growing body of researchers argues that universal cutoffs can misclassify both children and adults, sometimes in opposite directions, by overstating pathology in some groups and missing danger in others. Public health agencies have begun to adjust guidance in some settings, especially around BMI and diabetes risk, though no full replacement for universal standards has taken hold. The emerging view is that common benchmarks remain valuable, but increasingly recognized as flawed when treated as if all populations were built on the same template.

Status: A small but growing and influential group of experts think this was false

People Involved

Manvir Singh, an assistant professor of anthropology at UC Davis, wrote in The New Yorker about how his own daughter was flagged as wasted on the standard charts despite hitting every developmental milestone and radiating health. His account carried weight because it came from someone inside the academic world that had long defended universal standards. The piece circulated among parents and clinicians, quietly planting doubts about whether one set of numbers could really speak for every ancestry. ^[1][7]
Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, spent years tracking the Daasanach people in East Africa and watched their children grow tall and active while the WHO charts branded them malnourished. He described the mismatch in his book Adaptable as a clear sign of local adaptation rather than deficit. His fieldwork gave concrete numbers and photographs that made the abstract debate suddenly visible. The observation spread through both scientific circles and popular science writing, forcing readers to confront how a mid-century Ohio sample had been treated as eternal truth. ^[1][7]
Daniel Hruschka, an anthropologist at Arizona State University, spent more than a decade combing through anthropometric records from seventy countries and showed that basal height and BMI differences persisted even when environment was held constant. His papers demonstrated that Indian children remained three centimeters shorter than Haitian children under identical conditions, a gap that environmental explanations could not close. Colleagues initially treated the findings as interesting but peripheral; over time they became harder to dismiss. ^[1][7]
Ashley Montagu published Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race in 1942 and spent decades arguing that race was purely a social label with no meaningful genetic content. His book became a foundational text in anthropology departments and shaped generations of scholars who carried the universal-patient assumption into medicine and public health. The work was cited whenever anyone suggested ancestry might matter for growth or metabolism. ^[10]
Richard Lewontin, a geneticist, published his 1972 study showing that 85 percent of protein variation existed within populations and only 15 percent between them. The numbers were repeated in textbooks and lectures as proof that biological races were insignificant. Lewontin's framing became the default position in anthropology and parts of medicine for the next half century. ^[10]

▶ Supporting Quotes (21)

“When my daughter was ten and a half months old, she qualified as “wasted,” which UNICEF describes as “the most immediate, visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition.””— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“While Pontzer was visiting a semidesert village in northern Kenya to study the Daasanach pastoralists, a German charity representative told him that the community was being devastated by malnutrition.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“According to Daniel Hruschka, an anthropologist at Arizona State University, none of these theories explain away the discrepancies.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“To determine adjusted BMI thresholds by race and sex, we took an approach similar to that used by Wildman et al to recalibrate adjusted BMI cutoffs for Asians.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“In our ‘1976 study’ of South Asian children living in the Netherlands, we developed reference values based on data from South Asian children born in 1974–1976”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“Herman Pontzer... recounts facing a similar conundrum... Where the German charity diagnosed deficiency, Pontzer saw adaptation.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“According to Daniel Hruschka... resulting in a slew of revealing findings... patterns... strongly suggest that genetics plays a major role.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“as the Indian pediatrician Harshpal Singh Sachdev recently observed in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, two sites could differ by as much as a standard deviation and still be considered equivalent. That’s like saying that the mean adult heights in Denmark and Taiwan exhibit “striking similarity” despite differing by more than six centimetres.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“Authors Danielle Jefferies Senior Analyst Danielle Jefferies Senior Analyst”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“According to Daniel Hruschka, an anthropologist at Arizona State University... In research published in the twenty-tens, he confirmed... In one of his most ambitious projects, published in 2020, he and his former student Joseph Hackman... analyzed measurements from 1.5 million children across seventy countries.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“In “Adaptable: How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Our Biology Unites Us” (Avery), Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, recounts facing a similar conundrum... Where the German charity diagnosed deficiency, Pontzer saw adaptation.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“Consider, for instance, a 2020 incident involving Norman C. Wang, a cardiologist with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. After Wang published a peer-reviewed critique of affirmative action in a respected medical journal, his colleagues denounced him on social media for his “racist thinking” and condemned his paper as scientifically invalid and “racist”…”— The Politicization of Medicine

“Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, recounts facing a similar conundrum... When Pontzer and his team tracked the growth of Daasanach children, they uncovered patterns that sharply diverged from the W.H.O. curves. At around age two, these kids gain height at rates seldom seen elsewhere in the world. At five, they stand taller, on average, than well-fed kids in Europe and North America.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“Daniel Hruschka, an anthropologist at Arizona State University... In research published in the twenty-tens, he confirmed that a single B.M.I. cutoff for distinguishing normal from obese body weight overestimates obesity... in populations with stockier bodies... and underestimates it in leaner peoples (South Asians). What’s more, patterns in slenderness... strongly suggest that genetics plays a major role.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“In 1942, the anthropologist Ashley Montagu published “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race,” an influential book that argued that race is a social concept with no genetic basis.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“That year, the geneticist Richard Lewontin published an important study of variation in protein types in blood. ... He grouped the human populations he analyzed into seven “races” ... and found that around 85 percent of variation in the protein types could be accounted for by variation within populations and “races,” and only 15 percent by variation across them.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“Nicholas Wade, a longtime science journalist for The New York Times, rightly notes in his 2014 book, “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History,” ... But he goes on to make the unfounded and irresponsible claim that this research is suggesting that genetic factors explain traditional stereotypes.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“Another high-profile example is James Watson, the scientist who in 1953 co-discovered the structure of DNA, and who was forced to retire as head of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in 2007 after he stated in an interview — without any scientific evidence — that research has suggested that genetic factors contribute to lower intelligence in Africans than in Europeans.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“Beginning in 1972, genetic findings began to be incorporated into this argument. That year, the geneticist Richard Lewontin published an important study of variation in protein types in blood. [...] He grouped the human populations he analyzed into seven “races” [...] and found that around 85 percent of variation in the protein types could be accounted for by variation within populations and “races,” and only 15 percent by variation across them.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

Organizations Involved

The World Health Organization built its 2006 child growth standards on data collected from affluent, breast-fed children at six sites, then declared the resulting curves applicable to every population on earth. It distributed the charts to 125 countries, required new record systems and retraining, and used them to set global malnutrition targets. The organization insisted that debates about ethnic differences were merely academic. ^[1][6][7]

UNICEF adopted the WHO charts as its official definition of wasting and applied them to infants worldwide, including South Asian babies who appeared healthy to their parents and pediatricians. The classification triggered unnecessary dietary interventions and parental anxiety in immigrant communities. The agency continued the practice for years even after field reports noted the mismatch. ^[1][7]

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in England set a BMI cutoff of 27.5 for South Asian and Chinese adults in 2013, following a WHO consultation, yet left other minority groups on the standard European threshold. The guideline shaped lifestyle-intervention programs and eligibility for certain treatments without direct diabetes-outcome data for most of the populations it covered. NICE later acknowledged that studies underpinning the mixed-ethnicity rules were nonexistent. ^[2][8]

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company created the original height-weight tables in 1942, 1959, and 1983 using its own policyholders, almost all white and middle-class. Those tables became the ancestor of modern BMI standards and were adopted by public-health agencies without metabolic-risk adjustments. The company's longevity data was treated as a universal benchmark for decades. ^[3]

The American Anthropological Association issued its 1998 statement declaring that race was a recent social invention with no biological validity and that physical traits varied gradually and independently. The document was presented as the settled view of the discipline and was cited in medical-school curricula and NIH grant reviews whenever ancestry-based research was questioned. ^[13]

▶ Supporting Quotes (29)

“But data on babies’ growth tends to come from Yellow Springs, Ohio in the mid-20th Century, which isn’t representative of the New, Improved America, much less of the World.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“she qualified as “wasted,” which UNICEF describes as “the most immediate, visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition.””— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“Originating from a WHO expert consultation in 2004, WHO, and, subsequently, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), recommended a BMI cutoff of 27·5 kg/m2 be used for south Asian and Chinese populations to trigger the implementation of lifestyle interventions.”— Ethnicity-specific BMI cutoffs for obesity based on type 2 diabetes risk in England: a population-based cohort study

“Current BMI cutoffs originated from historical Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC) actuarial data. In 1942, they developed standard tables to determine “ideal” weight, in 1959 “desirable” weight, and in 1983 “height to weight” tables became the standard.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“When obesity is defined by a correlation with the presence of metabolic risk factors, the BMI cutoffs to define obesity would change for specific race/ethnicity and sex subgroups instead of a single BMI threshold based on historical statistical data from more than 60 years ago.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“In 1998, the WHO provided international body mass index (BMI) standards for classifying overweight and obesity in adults, based on the risk of obesity-related disease for Europeans at each BMI category.”— Accuracy of the WHO’s body mass index cut-off points to measure gender- and age-specific obesity in middle-aged adults living in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“The WHO child growth standard (0–5 years) was designed as a universal norm, because WHO concluded that growth of affluent children between birth and 5 years of age was found to be quite similar on all continents.”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“They are deemed good representatives for humankind, and are intended to be standards, not merely references, providing targets for children’s growth in all countries and for all ethnicities[8].”— WHO child growth standards for Pygmies: one size fits all?

“The justification for this claim is based on two premises... Accepting these arguments, a large number of countries have adopted the WHO standards.”— WHO child growth standards for Pygmies: one size fits all?

“when the W.H.O. released new child-growth standards, in 2006... By April, 2011, a hundred and twenty-five countries had adopted them”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“she qualified as “wasted,” which UNICEF describes as “the most immediate, visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition.””— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“Currently, BMI benchmarks are widely used to do this.”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“One solution is to create ethnicity-specific benchmarks, which NICE (which produces guidelines for the health system in the UK) created for BMI in 2023.”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“data on babies’ growth tends to come from Yellow Springs, Ohio in the mid-20th Century... Pontzer and his team tracked the growth of Daasanach children, they uncovered patterns that sharply diverged from the W.H.O. curves... These standards inform everything from how we define malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies to how we estimate the risks of growth abnormalities, metabolic disorders, and cardiovascular dysfunction. They drive global funding priorities, shape international aid programs, and inform social policies.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“she qualified as “wasted,” which UNICEF describes as “the most immediate, visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition.””— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“Within a week of Floyd’s death, for example, the Association of American Medical Colleges, which is a co-sponsor of a major accrediting body, announced that the nation’s 155 medical schools “must employ antiracist and unconscious bias training and engage in interracial dialogues.””— The Politicization of Medicine

“A year later (and again in 2024), the American Medical Association released a Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity that encouraged physicians to dismantle “white patriarchy and other systems of oppression”…”— The Politicization of Medicine

“Researchers are promoting unscientific modes of thinking about group-based disparities in health access and status. The University of Minnesota’s Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity decrees “structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities,” despite the fact that this is at best an arguable thesis, not a fact…”— The Politicization of Medicine

“In what borders on compelled speech, the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University issued a 164-page report from a diversity task force insisting that “Health care professionals must explicitly acknowledge that race and racism are at the root of [Black-white] health disparities.””— The Politicization of Medicine

“At one point, the CDC vaccine advisory committee proposed prioritizing the anticipated Covid vaccine by race rather than age, solely because older cohorts disproportionately comprised whites.”— The Politicization of Medicine

“To develop their first tables in 1942, they used data from 4,000,000 MLIC policyholders from 1911 to 1935 to assess “ideal” weight on the basis of longevity according to sex, height, and weight.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“With information from the Fogarty International Center Conference on Obesity in 1973 and the National Institutes of Health National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the current BMI tables were developed.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“By April, 2011, a hundred and twenty-five countries had adopted them, and the United Nations treated them as the new gold standard. Implementation was costly, often requiring countries to overhaul child-health records, retrain medical personnel, and acquire new measurement equipment.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“When my daughter was ten and a half months old, she qualified as “wasted,” which UNICEF describes as “the most immediate, visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition.””— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“In a 2019 paper published in Philosophical Psychology... in June 2020 the editor of the journal resigned over the controversy.”— EXCLUSIVE: Researcher who wrote on race 'IQ gaps' hired by Cambridge

“Not all ethnicities are equitably represented on the registry, however. ... donors of African American ancestry remain underrepresented on the registry. ... 13% of registry members identify as Hispanic or Latino. That’s not enough, though, to meet the needs of Hispanic patients looking for an unrelated blood stem cell donor.”— Why Ethnicity Matters for Bone Marrow Transplants | NMDP

“By joining the registry, you give hope to patients like you and so many others who are looking for their cure.”— Why Ethnicity Matters for Bone Marrow Transplants | NMDP

“The following statement was adopted by the AAA Executive Board on May 17,1998, acting on a draft prepared by a committee of representative American anthropologists... We believe that it represents generally the contemporary thinking and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists.”— AAA Statement on Race

The Foundation

The belief that a single human prototype could serve as the clinical standard for everyone rested on what looked like solid evidence at the time. WHO researchers had measured well-nourished, breast-fed children at six sites on four continents and found average heights within half a standard deviation of one another. That similarity seemed to confirm that, given the same environment, every population would follow the same growth curve. The data came from careful studies of nonsmoking mothers and healthy infants, exactly the conditions public-health officials wanted to promote. A reasonable person in the early 2000s could conclude that any deviations were small enough to ignore for practical purposes. ^[7]

Yet the charts were built on a narrow slice of humanity. The six sites included no East Asians, no Pacific Islanders, and only one African group. Later work showed that ancestry-based baselines for height and body composition persisted even when nutrition and income were equalized. Indian children remained shorter than Haitian children by three centimeters at age two under identical conditions. The assumption that environment explained everything had quietly ignored the genetic component that field anthropologists kept bumping into. ^[1][5]

The same pattern appeared with BMI. The cutoff of 30 kg/m² had been derived from white European and American populations where it roughly tracked body-fat percentages and mortality. It seemed efficient, cheap, and noninvasive. Proponents argued that a universal number simplified everything from insurance tables to global obesity reports. What they missed was that Pacific Islanders carried more muscle at the same BMI while South Asians carried more fat. The single threshold therefore overestimated obesity in some groups and underestimated it in others, missing an estimated 500 million people who were metabolically overweight. ^[1][3][4]

Growing evidence suggests the universal-patient model was flawed in its foundational claim that one set of numbers could fit all ancestries. Studies from the UK, Brazil, and Southeast Asia have shown that diabetes risk, fat distribution, and optimal BMI cutoffs differ by ancestry in ways the original charts never captured. The debate is not yet settled, but an influential minority now argues that personalized thresholds produce more accurate risk prediction. ^[2][3][8]

▶ Supporting Quotes (36)

“These standards inform everything from how we define malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies to how we estimate the risks of growth abnormalities, metabolic disorders, and cardiovascular dysfunction.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“he confirmed that a single B.M.I. cutoff for distinguishing normal from obese body weight overestimates obesity, as defined by body fat, in populations with stockier bodies (Pacific Islanders, say) and underestimates it in leaner peoples (South Asians).”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“The suggested BMI cutoff now used to define obesity (≥30 kg/m2) was developed from observational studies in Europe and the USA of exclusively White populations and based on the association between BMI and mortality.”— Ethnicity-specific BMI cutoffs for obesity based on type 2 diabetes risk in England: a population-based cohort study

“The expert consultation recalculated BMI cutoffs based on the measurement of percentage body fat, which is typically higher in Asian people than in White people, from studies done in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand.”— Ethnicity-specific BMI cutoffs for obesity based on type 2 diabetes risk in England: a population-based cohort study

“Body mass index (BMI; calculated as the weight in kilograms divided by the height in meters squared) has been the standard measure for defining obesity because it is quick, inexpensive, and noninvasive, and has some correlation to metabolic disease prevalence.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“To create a normal distribution curve, they characterized policyholders into small, medium, and large body frames, with obesity being defined as a weight of over 20% to 25%, and severe obesity 70% to 100% over “ideal.””— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“investigators have asserted that obesity corresponds to a BF% greater than 25% for men and 35% for women, and these percentages relate to a BMI of 30 kg/m2 in young Caucasians.”— Accuracy of the WHO’s body mass index cut-off points to measure gender- and age-specific obesity in middle-aged adults living in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“Despite this limitation, the strong relationship between increased BMI and morbidity and mortality supports its application as a nutritional indicator in epidemiological studies”— Accuracy of the WHO’s body mass index cut-off points to measure gender- and age-specific obesity in middle-aged adults living in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“growth of affluent children between birth and 5 years of age was found to be quite similar on all continents.”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“the body composition of Asian people differs from Caucasians. For any given BMI (or weight), Asian populations generally have a larger fat mass together with a smaller muscle mass than Caucasian populations”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“These standards, for children aged <5 years, are based on healthy, breastfed infants and children from healthy mothers without socio-economic and environmental constraints from six countries (Brazil, Ghana, India, Norway, Oman, USA).”— WHO child growth standards for Pygmies: one size fits all?

“Growth is under strong genetic regulation. The association between population genetic marker values and height has been confirmed... Whilst the WHO explicitly advises against country- or race-specific growth references[16], African Pygmies[17] (Note 1), which have a characteristically small body size (average adult height of 155 cm), merit explicit attention.”— WHO child growth standards for Pygmies: one size fits all?

“The coördinating team recruited participants from six far-flung locations... The coördinator also noted a “striking similarity” in the data collected among the six sites”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“he confirmed that a single B.M.I. cutoff... overestimates obesity... in populations with stockier bodies (Pacific Islanders, say) and underestimates it in leaner peoples (South Asians). What’s more, patterns in slenderness... strongly suggest that genetics plays a major role.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“BMI benchmarks are based on White European or American populations and were not designed for people from global majority ethnic backgrounds (Black, Asian, Brown, dual heritage and indigenous ethnicities, otherwise described as ethnic minority groups in the UK).”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“We know there are differences in health outcomes for people from global majority backgrounds. Some of these differences exist because people have different, and often unequal, experiences of the world around them (eg, experiences of poverty, education and racism) and because people exhibit different health behaviours. And some of these differences are inherited – for example, genetic differences between ethnicities.”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“If the W.H.O. had been right to assume that children’s potential height is the same everywhere, basal height-for-age measurements should be consistent across populations. They weren’t. For instance, the basal heights of children in India differed by more than a standard deviation from those of children in Haiti.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“a single B.M.I. cutoff for distinguishing normal from obese body weight overestimates obesity... in populations with stockier bodies (Pacific Islanders, say) and underestimates it in leaner peoples (South Asians). What’s more... Hruschka and the anthropologist Craig Hadley... estimated that the standard B.M.I. cutoff misses roughly half a billion overweight people, including some two hundred and fifty million in South Asia alone.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“The University of Minnesota’s Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity decrees “structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities,” despite the fact that this is at best an arguable thesis, not a fact…”— The Politicization of Medicine

““Health care professionals must explicitly acknowledge that race and racism are at the root of [Black-white] health disparities.” Other variables influencing the course of chronic disease, prominently the patient’s health literacy and self-care, receive scant attention…”— The Politicization of Medicine

“The BMI cutoffs differ in Asian Americans who have a higher risk of metabolic disease at lower BMI values. As such, the BMI criteria for Asian Americans have been adjusted to lower values for all weight classes.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“The coördinating team recruited participants from six far-flung locations: Oslo, Norway; Muscat, Oman; Pelotas, Brazil; New Delhi, India; Accra, Ghana; and, as it happens, the city where I live, Davis, California... most residents of Oslo, Pelotas, and Davis were of European ancestry. Africa, with more genetic diversity than any other continent, was characterized by a single site. Pacific Islanders, Indigenous Americans, and, most glaringly, East and Southeast Asians were not represented.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“The team based its claim on the fact that, at every age, the average height of children at each site was within half a standard deviation of the over-all average. But by that reasoning, as the Indian pediatrician Harshpal Singh Sachdev recently observed in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, two sites could differ by as much as a standard deviation and still be considered equivalent.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“To the extent that there was variation among humans, he concluded, most of it was because of “differences between individuals.” In this way, a consensus was established that among human populations there are no differences large enough to support the concept of “biological race.””— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“A classic example often cited is the inconsistent definition of “black.” In the United States, historically, a person is “black” if he has any sub-Saharan African ancestry; in Brazil, a person is not “black” if he is known to have any European ancestry.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“When it comes to matching HLA types, a patient’s ethnic background is important in predicting the likelihood of finding a match. That’s because HLA is inherited. Some ethnic groups have more complex tissue types than others, which makes finding a close match more difficult.”— Why Ethnicity Matters for Bone Marrow Transplants | NMDP

“They’re especially needed for patients with conditions such as sickle cell disease.”— Why Ethnicity Matters for Bone Marrow Transplants | NMDP

“He grouped the human populations he analyzed into seven “races” — West Eurasians, Africans, East Asians, South Asians, Native Americans, Oceanians and Australians — and found that around 85 percent of variation in the protein types could be accounted for by variation within populations and “races,” and only 15 percent by variation across them.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“You will sometimes hear that any biological differences among populations are likely to be small, because humans have diverged too recently from common ancestors for substantial differences to have arisen under the pressure of natural selection. This is not true.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“Evidence from the analysis of genetics (eg, DNA) indicates that there is greater variation within racial groups than between them. This means that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes.”— AAA Statement on Race

“Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over geographic areas. And because physical traits are inherited independently of one another, knowing the range of one trait does not predict the presence of others.”— AAA Statement on Race

“Historical research has shown that the idea of race has always carried more meanings than mere physical differences... Today scholars in many fields argue that race as it is understood in the USA was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.”— AAA Statement on Race

“Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior. Scientists today find that reliance on such folk beliefs about human differences in research has led to countless errors. At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural behavior is learned, conditioned into infants beginning at birth, and always subject to modification.”— AAA Statement on Race

“the majority of pharmacogenomic variation is expected to fall within rather than between racial and ethnic groups”— Race and Genetic Ancestry in Medicine - A Time for Reckoning with Racism

How It Spread

The idea spread first through the machinery of international aid. WHO and UNICEF distributed the charts to clinics and charities across the global south. Pediatricians in London and Los Angeles used the same printouts for immigrant families, creating a seamless loop of authority. South Asian parents learned to worry when their perfectly healthy babies plotted below the line. Online forums filled with anxious posts about forcing ghee down small children who were simply following their own genetic timetable. ^[1]

Academic consensus helped lock the assumption in place. Textbooks and grant reviewers treated Lewontin's 1972 numbers as proof that between-group genetic differences were trivial. Researchers who stumbled on persistent ancestry effects in height or metabolism learned to describe them as environmental puzzles or risk running afoul of the taboo. The South Asian Enigma, in which Indian children appeared stunted by WHO standards yet showed other health markers that contradicted simple malnutrition, was explained away as cultural rather than genetic. ^[10]

Medical organizations amplified the message. The NHS and NICE embedded the BMI thresholds in national guidelines and calculators. Schools of medicine added antiracism modules that framed attention to biological ancestry as retrograde. The result was a professional culture in which questioning the universal charts could be interpreted as political rather than scientific. ^[8][9]

The consensus spread through anthropology and parts of genetics as settled doctrine. The American Anthropological Association's statement became required reading. Fear of misuse for racist ends made population-genetic research on trait differences radioactive. Into that vacuum stepped figures like Nicholas Wade and James Watson, whose unsubstantiated claims met little immediate scientific rebuttal because the mainstream had declared the topic off-limits. ^[10][13]

▶ Supporting Quotes (22)

“These standards inform everything from how we define malnutrition... They drive global funding priorities, shape international aid programs, and inform social policies.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“On Reddit forums such as r/india and r/ABCDesis, we discovered parents worrying about the same issue.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“National and global recommendations for BMI cutoffs to trigger action to prevent obesity-related complications like type 2 diabetes among non-White populations are questionable.”— Ethnicity-specific BMI cutoffs for obesity based on type 2 diabetes risk in England: a population-based cohort study

“In both clinical practice and population studies, BMI is often used for quantitative diagnosis of obesity due to its simplicity and high correlation to body fat content and body mass.”— Accuracy of the WHO’s body mass index cut-off points to measure gender- and age-specific obesity in middle-aged adults living in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“Despite it being implemented in over 125 countries, including a complementary reference for 5–19-year-olds”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“a large number of countries have adopted the WHO standards with only a few, especially in Europe, not implementing them since 2011[8,15].”— WHO child growth standards for Pygmies: one size fits all?

“the United Nations treated them as the new gold standard. Implementation was costly, often requiring countries to overhaul child-health records, retrain medical personnel”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“Population health and prevention are top of the agenda for the government and the NHS. To understand whether progress is being made, we need benchmarks for health that can track health across the diversity of our population. For example, we need to be able to measure levels of obesity in the population, as this is a major public health concern.”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“Our pediatrician was worried. Ease off the lentils and vegetable smoothies, we were warned; we needed to get more calories into our babe... When my daughter was ten and a half months old, she qualified as “wasted,””— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“many researchers have been wary of considering the possibility. In their efforts to resolve the South Asian Enigma, for example, they have busily investigated the effects of open-air defecation, maternal nutrition, and a preference for firstborn sons on the subcontinent.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“Medical students are now immersed in the notion that undertaking political advocacy is as important as learning gross anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology… Certain debates have become off-limits.”— The Politicization of Medicine

“As the project coördinating team wrote in 2006, the standards could be used “to assess children everywhere, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status and type of feeding.” The coördinator also noted a “striking similarity” in the data collected among the six sites... These standards inform everything from how we define malnutrition... They drive global funding priorities, shape international aid programs, and inform social policies.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“But over the years this consensus has morphed, seemingly without questioning, into an orthodoxy. The orthodoxy maintains that the average genetic differences among people grouped according to today’s racial terms are so trivial when it comes to any meaningful biological traits that those differences can be ignored.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“The orthodoxy goes further, holding that we should be anxious about any research into genetic differences among populations. The concern is that such research, no matter how well-intentioned, is located on a slippery slope that leads to the kinds of pseudoscientific arguments about biological difference that were used in the past to try to justify the slave trade, the eugenics movement and the Nazis’ murder of six million Jews.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“Students have slammed the decision to hire him as 'disappointing' and 'crazy'... one philosophy student telling Varsity: 'It's crazy that someone who's published such obviously questionable work has been given not only a platform but a Fellow position. 'It's obviously disappointing but not surprising.''”— EXCLUSIVE: Researcher who wrote on race 'IQ gaps' hired by Cambridge

“NMDP is working to break down barriers to joining the registry.”— Why Ethnicity Matters for Bone Marrow Transplants | NMDP

“In this way, a consensus was established that among human populations there are no differences large enough to support the concept of “biological race.” [...] But over the years this consensus has morphed, seemingly without questioning, into an orthodoxy.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“In the US both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups.”— AAA Statement on Race

“It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal human beings have the capacity to learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants from hundreds of different language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired some version of American culture traits and behavior is the clearest evidence of this fact.”— AAA Statement on Race

“More than 80% of participants in existing genomewide association studies are of European background”— Race and Genetic Ancestry in Medicine - A Time for Reckoning with Racism

Resulting Policies

The WHO released its child growth standards in 2006 and urged every country to adopt them for clinical care, research, and nutrition surveillance. By 2011, 125 nations had rewritten records, retrained staff, and purchased new equipment. The charts became the basis for UN Sustainable Development Goal targets on stunting and wasting. Aid programs in East Africa began handing out high-calorie supplements to two-thirds of Daasanach children labeled malnourished by the universal curve. ^[6][7]

In England, NICE set the BMI cutoff at 27.5 for South Asian and Chinese adults in its obesity guidelines. The threshold triggered earlier lifestyle interventions and altered eligibility for medications and bariatric surgery. The policy rested on body-fat data rather than direct diabetes outcomes and left Black, Arab, and mixed populations on the original European cutoff. ^[2][8]

The CDC vaccine advisory committee briefly considered prioritizing COVID-19 shots by race rather than age in 2020. Models showed the race-based approach would produce more total deaths than simple age prioritization. The proposal was withdrawn after public criticism but illustrated how the assumption that race was only social could flip into race-conscious policy when politically convenient. ^[9]

The American Medical Association's 2021 strategic plan called on physicians to dismantle systems of oppression and treat structural racism as a root cause of health disparities. Medical schools across the United States added mandatory antiracism training. Time spent on political advocacy came at the expense of deeper engagement with biological ancestry data that might have improved clinical accuracy. ^[9]

▶ Supporting Quotes (20)

“WHO, and, subsequently, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), recommended a BMI cutoff of 27·5 kg/m2 be used for south Asian and Chinese populations to trigger the implementation of lifestyle interventions.”— Ethnicity-specific BMI cutoffs for obesity based on type 2 diabetes risk in England: a population-based cohort study

“the prevalence of obesity in the adult population in the 27 cities covered by the VIGITEL system increased from 11.6% to 17.4% from 2006 to 2012”— Accuracy of the WHO’s body mass index cut-off points to measure gender- and age-specific obesity in middle-aged adults living in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“the universal application of both the standard and the reference for assessing growth of children has been questioned repeatedly”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“To achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals and to fulfil our humanitarian responsibility for fellow man, we recommend that Pygmy specific growth standards are developed.”— WHO child growth standards for Pygmies: one size fits all?

“These standards inform everything from how we define malnutrition... They drive global funding priorities, shape international aid programs”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“The NHS BMI calculator lowers BMI thresholds for people from a Mixed background, despite the fact there are no scientific studies that include people of a Mixed background. There are also no scientific studies on people from a Latino background, but if someone from this background (who might have similar amounts of Black heritage as someone who is Mixed) choses the ‘Other ethnic group’ on the NHS BMI calculator, it’ll automatically give higher thresholds, as if they were White.”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“Charity workers had plotted the heights and weights of Daasanach children on World Health Organization charts... and determined that more than two-thirds of the kids were malnourished. As a result, families were enrolled in a nutrition program and provided with high-calorie, industrially processed supplements.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“the Association of American Medical Colleges… announced that the nation’s 155 medical schools “must employ antiracist and unconscious bias training and engage in interracial dialogues.””— The Politicization of Medicine

“the American Medical Association released a Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity that encouraged physicians to dismantle “white patriarchy and other systems of oppression”…”— The Politicization of Medicine

“the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University issued a 164-page report from a diversity task force insisting that “Health care professionals must explicitly acknowledge that race and racism are at the root of [Black-white] health disparities.””— The Politicization of Medicine

“the CDC vaccine advisory committee proposed prioritizing the anticipated Covid vaccine by race rather than age… This plan would have delayed vaccination of the elderly—the highest risk group—and, according to the CDC’s own projections, resulted in more overall deaths…”— The Politicization of Medicine

“Implementation was costly, often requiring countries to overhaul child-health records, retrain medical personnel, and acquire new measurement equipment.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“The University of Cambridge has hired a controversial 'race researcher' to its Faculty of Philosophy... Nathan Cofnas, an American who was appointed on a three year programme as an 'early career fellow' on September 1 of this year... said the University of Cambridge knew about the paper before he took up his position there.”— EXCLUSIVE: Researcher who wrote on race 'IQ gaps' hired by Cambridge

“we’re working to increase the diversity of the donor registry through our recruitment efforts. By doing so, we expand access to a cure for more individuals.”— Why Ethnicity Matters for Bone Marrow Transplants | NMDP

“Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called racial groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational and political circumstances.”— AAA Statement on Race

Harm Caused

South Asian parents in Britain and North America were told their thriving infants were wasted. Many responded by altering diets, adding extra ghee or formula, and living with chronic worry. The misclassification turned normal variation into a medical problem and eroded trust in pediatric advice. ^[1]

Global statistics became distorted. WHO reports claimed nearly one in six African children was underweight and 45 million under-fives wasted. Those numbers guided billions in aid that sometimes fed healthy children high-calorie supplements while missing genuine problems such as anemia in Pygmy populations. ^[7][6]

BMI thresholds missed an estimated 500 million overweight adults, including 250 million in South Asia, because the universal cutoff underestimated adiposity in leaner ancestries. The underdiagnosis delayed diabetes prevention, lifestyle counseling, and early therapy. In Brazil the same cutoff misclassified women in particular, producing inaccurate prevalence data and postponed interventions for hypertension and metabolic disease. ^[1][2][4]

The politicization of medicine carried its own costs. Physicians spent hours on antiracism modules and equity statements instead of studying ancestry-specific risk. Public trust eroded when medicine appeared more interested in activism than in refining its tools. The CDC's race-based vaccine proposal, had it been followed, would have delayed shots for the elderly and produced excess deaths according to the agency's own models. ^[9]

▶ Supporting Quotes (24)

“The classification felt like a pronouncement of failure... Ease off the lentils and vegetable smoothies, we were warned; we needed to get more calories into our babe. Ghee, peanut butter—we were to drench her food in these”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“In 2016, Hruschka and the anthropologist Craig Hadley, at Emory University, estimated that the standard B.M.I. cutoff misses roughly half a billion overweight people, including some two hundred and fifty million in South Asia alone.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“However, these benefits cannot be fully realised if current WHO and NICE recommendations for obesity under-recognise the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in minority ethnic populations.”— Ethnicity-specific BMI cutoffs for obesity based on type 2 diabetes risk in England: a population-based cohort study

“We believe that our proposed recalibration of BMI values that defines obesity in a more biologically based approach allows for a more individualized approach rather than the current “one-size fits all.” ... to prevent underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis, which have considerable clinical, psychological, and financial implications for patients.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“previous studies suggest that men with an overweight BMI without central adiposity have elevated cardiovascular risk factors but lower all-cause mortality risk than do men of other weight categories.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“a single BMI value might represent a large range of BF%, due to the instrumentation as well as the ethnic and environmental characteristics of studied population.”— Accuracy of the WHO’s body mass index cut-off points to measure gender- and age-specific obesity in middle-aged adults living in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“Obesity is considered a public health problem, leading to serious social, psychological and physical problems. This disease is associated with an increased risk of morbidity and mortality”— Accuracy of the WHO’s body mass index cut-off points to measure gender- and age-specific obesity in middle-aged adults living in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“parents might have been wrongly informed to stimulate their child to eat more; and, on the other, parents might have been wrongly reassured that their child had a normal weight.”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“if we would have used a reference based on more recently acquired data, we would have underestimated overweight and obesity prevalence figures in this group”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“Baka children revealed with 68.4% the highest recorded level globally of stunting relative to the WHO child growth standard in 2-to-4 year olds.”— WHO child growth standards for Pygmies: one size fits all?

“Wasting was at 8.2% in the upper third range in Sub-Saharan Africa. Obesity was with 6.5% similar to wasting... Brachial perimeters and oedemas indicated rare severe malnutrition (< 2%) whilst moderate and severe anaemia were frequent (26.6% and 3.3%, respectively).”— WHO child growth standards for Pygmies: one size fits all?

“Charity workers had plotted... and determined that more than two-thirds of the kids were malnourished. As a result, families were enrolled in a nutrition program”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“When the W.H.O. reports that nearly one in six African children is underweight—or when the Global Nutrition Report states that 45.4 million children under the age of five are wasted”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“These different BMI thresholds have real-world consequences. At a population level, including or excluding an ethnic group from the threshold adjustment could significantly impact national obesity figures, and change how we measure health inequalities between different ethnicities. For individuals, lower BMI thresholds could be life changing. For the average-height adult, the cut-off point for being obese for people from a White ethnicity is more than a stone heavier than for people from a ‘Black, Asian or Middle Eastern background’. That could be significant if that person was sat in a GP appointment asking whether they qualify for bariatric surgery or weight loss drugs, or if they are healthy enough to receive NHS-funded IVF.”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“My wife and I had been trying hard to keep her weight up, and the classification felt like a pronouncement of failure... Ghee, peanut butter—we were to drench her food in these... “Everywhere we went, children were running, playing, and laughing... They didn’t seem low on energy, nor did they seem particularly short, or ‘stunted.’ "”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“They guide individual clinical assessments, like my daughter’s, and underpin broad statistical claims: seventeen per cent of humans are zinc-deficient; nearly a quarter of Asian-Pacific children are stunted.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“This plan would have delayed vaccination of the elderly—the highest risk group—and, according to the CDC’s own projections, resulted in more overall deaths…”— The Politicization of Medicine

“advocating on behalf of societal change can work against those patients, drawing time and attention away from their care.”— The Politicization of Medicine

“Opining and advocating on behalf of general social issues exploits their moral authority, turns medicine into a vehicle for politics, and risks the trust of the public.”— The Politicization of Medicine

“Charity workers had plotted the heights and weights of Daasanach children on World Health Organization charts... and determined that more than two-thirds of the kids were malnourished. As a result, families were enrolled in a nutrition program and provided with high-calorie, industrially processed supplements.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“when the W.H.O. reports that nearly one in six African children is underweight—or when the Global Nutrition Report states that 45.4 million children under the age of five are wasted—public-health policies are guided by untested assumptions... In 2016, Hruschka and the anthropologist Craig Hadley, at Emory University, estimated that the standard B.M.I. cutoff misses roughly half a billion overweight people, including some two hundred and fifty million in South Asia alone.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“To understand why it is so dangerous for geneticists and anthropologists to simply repeat the old consensus about human population differences, consider what kinds of voices are filling the void that our silence is creating.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“To support our vision of creating a world where every patient can receive their life-saving cell therapy, we’re working to increase the diversity of the donor registry through our recruitment efforts.”— Why Ethnicity Matters for Bone Marrow Transplants | NMDP

“I am worried that well-meaning people who deny the possibility of substantial biological differences among human populations are digging themselves into an indefensible position, one that will not survive the onslaught of science. [...] To understand why it is so dangerous for geneticists and anthropologists to simply repeat the old consensus about human population differences, consider what kinds of voices are filling the void that our silence is creating.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

Downfall

The assumption began to crack in the 2010s when large-scale studies could no longer ignore the data. Hruschka and colleagues analyzed 1.5 million children across seventy countries and documented persistent ancestry-based height gaps even after controlling for nutrition and income. Indian children remained three centimeters shorter than Haitian children at age two under equivalent conditions. The gap was too systematic to dismiss as environment alone. ^[1]

Pontzer's longitudinal work with the Daasanach showed children diverging from WHO curves in ways that matched local adaptation for heat dissipation rather than deficiency. By age five many were taller than European peers yet remained lean. The photographs and measurements made the mismatch concrete. ^[1][7]

A 2021 UK cohort study of 1.47 million adults linked primary-care records to diabetes incidence and found that equivalent risk occurred at markedly lower BMIs for minority groups: 23.9 for South Asians, 28.1 for Black adults, 26.9 for Chinese, and 26.6 for Arabs. The numbers exposed the standard cutoffs as inadequate for prevention. ^[2]

Growing evidence suggests the universal model is flawed. NHANES analyses produced new race-, sex-, and risk-specific BMI thresholds that better predicted hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes. In Rio de Janeiro, optimal cutoffs differed sharply by gender. Among Baka Pygmy children, population-specific references dropped the stunting rate from 68 percent to 1 percent. The debate is not fully settled, but an influential minority now argues that ancestry-aware standards improve clinical accuracy. ^[3][4][6]

Advances in DNA sequencing over the past two decades revealed ancestry-correlated genetic variants for height, prostate-cancer risk, and other traits. David Reich and others showed that population differences are real and medically relevant. The old claim that genetic variation between groups is trivial no longer matched the data. ^[10]

▶ Supporting Quotes (22)

“Even when reared in identical environments, an Indian two-year-old would be expected to be three centimetres shorter than a Haitian two-year-old.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“At five, they stand taller, on average, than well-fed kids in Europe and North America. At the same time, they put on weight more slowly, developing lean physiques that are optimal for heat dissipation.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

“For the equivalent age-adjusted and sex-adjusted incidence of type 2 diabetes at a BMI of 30·0 kg/m2 in White populations, the BMI cutoffs were 23·9 kg/m2 (95% CI 23·6–24·0) in south Asian populations, 28·1 kg/m2 (28·0–28·4) in Black populations, 26·9 kg/m2 (26·7–27·2) in Chinese populations, and 26·6 kg/m2 (26·5–27·0) in Arab populations.”— Ethnicity-specific BMI cutoffs for obesity based on type 2 diabetes risk in England: a population-based cohort study

“US NHANES data from 1999 to 2016 were used to estimate the distribution of BMI, as well as 3 metabolic disease risk factors: hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“The BMI cut-offs for predicting BF% were 29.9 kg/m2 in men and 24.9 kg/m2 in women.”— Accuracy of the WHO’s body mass index cut-off points to measure gender- and age-specific obesity in middle-aged adults living in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“according to the SEANUTS data, from the age of 2 years the 97th percentile was higher, and even much higher at the age of 10 years, compared with the WHO reference.”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“even the WHO reference very likely leads to an underestimation of these prevalence figures, which is confirmed by the high fat mass percentages presented in Table 6 of the SEANUTS study, not only for the group >95th percentile, but also for the group between the 5th and 95th percentile.”— What do we learn from comparing ethnic-specific and WHO child growth references?

“When referenced to the Baka population itself, values for stunting were dramatically lower at 1.0% and 2.9% for 2-to-4 and 5-to-12 year olds, respectively.”— WHO child growth standards for Pygmies: one size fits all?

“When Pontzer and his team tracked the growth of Daasanach children, they uncovered patterns that sharply diverged from the W.H.O. curves. At around age two, these kids gain height at rates seldom seen elsewhere... At five, they stand taller, on average, than well-fed kids in Europe”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“A series of Stanford-led studies... documented a “dual paradox”... the so-called South Asian Enigma: India, Bangladesh, and Nepal exceed most sub-Saharan African countries... yet only six per cent of Haitian children are assessed as severely stunted, compared with fourteen per cent of Indian children.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“But when updating their BMI guidelines, NICE identified zero scientific studies on the BMI of people from Mixed ethnic backgrounds. The studies used to create the new ethnicity-specific BMI thresholds actually excluded people from Mixed ethnicity.”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“These evidence gaps likely exist because ethnicity-specific benchmarks rely on ethnicity being an objective and unchanging characteristic of an individual. The reality is very different – ethnic identity is subjective and determined not just by an individual by also by the social and political context in which that person lives.”— Do We Really Understand What A Healthy Weight Looks Like For All Ethnicities?

“A series of Stanford-led studies had analyzed millions of births in the U.S. and documented a “dual paradox”... the so-called South Asian Enigma... When Hruschka and Hackman recalculated... the basal heights of children in India differed by more than a standard deviation from those of children in Haiti.”— The New Yorker: Human Biodiversity is real & humane

““Dismantling white patriarchy and other systems of oppression” is not an actionable goal. Our primary job is to diagnose and treat… physicians’ actions or their advice to policymakers should be rooted in expertise that is unique to their profession.”— The Politicization of Medicine

“To determine adjusted BMI thresholds by race and sex, we took an approach similar to that used by Wildman et al to recalibrate adjusted BMI cutoffs for Asians. US NHANES data from 1999 to 2016 were used to estimate the distribution of BMI, as well as 3 metabolic disease risk factors: hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“The Table indicates that men would undergo a shift toward lower BMI cutoff. Although the projected new BMI cutoffs vary by race/ethnicity and disease risk factor, the overall trend is in the same direction. For women, the BMI shift for black women would be to higher cutoffs, whereas it would generally be lower for Hispanic and white women. For all groups studied, there would be a change in the prevalence of obesity.”— Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Obesity: Is It Time to Personalize the Scale?

“"Everywhere we went, children were running, playing, and laughing,” Pontzer writes. “Kids being kids. They didn’t seem low on energy, nor did they seem particularly short, or ‘stunted.’”... A series of Stanford-led studies had analyzed millions of births in the U.S. and documented a “dual paradox”... patterns in slenderness, such as similarities between closely related groups and between children and adults in the same group, strongly suggest that genetics plays a major role.”— Medical Benchmarks and the Myth of the Universal Patient

“Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology have been made over the last two decades. These advances enable us to measure with exquisite accuracy what fraction of an individual’s genetic ancestry traces back to, say, West Africa 500 years ago ... Recent genetic studies have demonstrated differences across populations not just in the genetic determinants of simple traits such as skin color, but also in more complex traits like bodily dimensions and susceptibility to diseases.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“In 2006, we found exactly what we were looking for: a location in the genome with about 2.8 percent more African ancestry than the average. ... A recent study led by the economist Daniel Benjamin ... identified 74 genetic variations that are over-represented in genes known to be important in neurological development.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

“Speaking to MailOnline, he confirms he still stands by what he wrote and said the University of Cambridge knew about the paper before he took up his position there.”— EXCLUSIVE: Researcher who wrote on race 'IQ gaps' hired by Cambridge

“A person’s ethnic background plays a significant role in their ability to donate peripheral blood stem cells or bone marrow.”— Why Ethnicity Matters for Bone Marrow Transplants | NMDP

“Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology have been made over the last two decades. These advances enable us to measure with exquisite accuracy what fraction of an individual’s genetic ancestry traces back to, say, West Africa 500 years ago [...] Recent genetic studies have demonstrated differences across populations not just in the genetic determinants of simple traits such as skin color, but also in more complex traits like bodily dimensions and susceptibility to diseases.”— How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'

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ID: FA-20260211-3594e956 · Created: 2026-02-11T00:43:16.199479 · Schema v3