El-Sayed faces racism, eugenics accusations over study on interracial relationships

Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed accused of racism over research paper warning against ‘interethnic mating’ with Arab women.

By World Israel News Staff

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing accusations of racism and eugenics over a resurfaced Columbia University research paper that associated relationships between Arab women and non-Arab men with an increased risk of premature childbirth.

The 2011 study, coauthored by El-Sayed and epidemiologist Sandro Galea, examined whether the ethnic backgrounds of parents influenced pregnancy outcomes among Arab American women.

The study has drawn criticism from Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators ahead of November’s Senate election.

Published in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, the paper was titled “Interethnic mating and risk for preterm birth among Arab-American mothers: Evidence from the Arab-American Birth Outcomes Study.”

The researchers analyzed Michigan birth records from 2000 to 2005, including 21,621 births to Arab American mothers and 594,431 births to non-Arab white mothers.

Among Arab American women, the study found that having a non-Arab father was associated with 18% higher incidence of premature births, defined as delivery before 37 weeks of pregnancy, compared with having an Arab father.

The association was stronger for late premature births, occurring between 34 and 36 weeks, where the researchers calculated 24% higher odds. However, they found no statistically significant difference in very premature births, occurring before 32 weeks.

No comparable statistically significant association was identified among the non-Arab white mothers examined.

“Our findings suggest that interethnic mating may be associated with increased risk for adverse birth outcomes among AE mothers,” the researchers wrote.

As an associational research paper, the study is unable to establish that having children with someone from another ethnic background caused premature births.

Nevertheless, its findings and terminology prompted a backlash after the research circulated online last week.

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, condemned the study in a post on X.

“This is ‘science’ with a pre-ordained racist & eugenics outcome. Scary stuff,” Cruz wrote.

Psychology researcher John David Haltigan also questioned the paper’s subject matter, calling El-Sayed’s research “odd” and asking why the candidate had chosen to investigate reproductive outcomes among mixed-ethnicity couples.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee joined the criticism, with communications director Joanna Rodriguez accusing El-Sayed of promoting racial fears.

“Does Abdul El-Sayed stand by his racist fearmongering?” Rodriguez asked.

The research was published under the name Abdulrahman M. El-Sayed, which the candidate used during his earlier academic career.

El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent, earned a medical degree from Columbia University but did not complete a medical residency, choosing instead to pursue public health research and administration.

The study also examined possible explanations for the association between paternal ethnicity and premature birth, including genetic, socioeconomic and cultural factors.

Its authors suggested that discrimination and psychological stress experienced by interracial couples could play a role in adverse pregnancy outcomes.

They also observed differences between Arab American women who had children with Arab men and those whose partners were non-Arab. The latter group tended to be older, more educated, less likely to have been born outside the US and more likely to smoke during pregnancy.

The researchers acknowledged that their analysis included limited socioeconomic information and that unmeasured factors could have influenced the results.

In particular, they noted that maternal education was the only conventional socioeconomic indicator included in their statistical models, leaving open the possibility that differences in household income and other circumstances affected their findings.

The paper called for additional research into the mechanisms underlying the observed association, including discrimination, stress, cultural practices and socioeconomic conditions.

The controversy has also drawn attention to an earlier study El-Sayed and Galea published in 2009 examining why Arab American women appeared to have lower rates of premature birth than white women.

That research found that the apparent advantage disappeared after accounting for several maternal and socioeconomic characteristics, including birthplace, marital status and smoking.