There is an impassioned debate taking place in medicine on whether race-based considerations should be a factor in research, diagnoses, or treatments. Those on one side assert that race should be ignored entirely because it is a societal construct with no biological basis, and accordingly many hospitals are abandoning long-established ‘race corrections’ in medical algorithms and diagnostics. Others, like Meghan McGarry, MD, MS, assistant professor of pediatrics at UC San Francisco, say that we can’t completely ignore race, precisely because science is rarely free of societal influence—the structural inequality of our institutions affects the investments we make in research, drug development, and care.