Blood Groups as Markers: Race and Disease

The Mendelian inheritance of blood types was of greatest interest because of potential linkage with other conditions thought to be inherited. This reflected the broad scientific and popular interest in heredity also seen in the wide appeal of eugenics during this time. The traits or conditions that were of interest to blood group researchers were race and disease with the concept of race being the most changed by this new research. Initially, blood groups were taken as a new and more precise way to define race, but by the end of the 1930s and especially after 1945, blood group genetics undermined the very concept of race and became the foundation of population genetics. The study of linkage to disease, largely neglected by scholars to date, was extensive although less conclusive.