Drug Toxicity and My Dad’s Ethnicity

PLAIN-LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Essay 

Considering Ethnicity and Genetic Ancestry Can Improve Patient Safety   

Background:Jaewon Yoon recounts how her Korean-American father suffered a severe drug reaction after starting allopurinol, a risk heightened by the HLA-B*5801 allele common in Koreans—information routinely used in South Korea but often overlooked in U.S. practice.

Key Argument:Yoon argues that, although race is a social construct, self-identified ethnicity and genetic ancestry can signal real safety risks or treatment responses; disentangling these from crude racial categories allows clinicians to target tests—like HLA genotyping—to prevent harm.

Why It Matters:Ignoring ethnic and ancestral factors endangers patients and deepens health inequities—as Yoon’s father’s life-threatening reaction, preventable by preemptive testing, demonstrates. Respectful, standardized collection of ethnicity and ancestry data, coupled with trainee education, sharpens diagnostic precision and honors patient diversity. Yoon challenges educators and health systems to balance dismantling racist practices with leveraging ancestry-based insights for safer, personalized care.

Drug Toxicity and My Dad’s Ethnicity

Jaewon Yoon 

Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 

David A. Hirsh, MD

Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

Department of Medicine, Cambridge Health Alliance, Cambridge, Massachusetts