Statement attributable to the Board of Directors of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry:
"Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has tested the limits of the laboratory medicine community's ingenuity and endurance. However, even as we have faced unprecedented challenges during this outbreak, our Asian and Asian American colleagues have been facing another outbreak: a surge of directed hostility and violence, fueled in part by xenophobic rhetoric around the coronavirus. It shouldn't have taken a shocking and deadly event to bring these circumstances to the level of attention and concern they have always deserved.
"We are appalled and angered by the horrific acts committed in and around Atlanta on March 16, which took the lives of eight people, including six Asian American women. We extend our deepest condolences to the families of all the shooting victims. We are equally devastated by the ongoing racist attacks targeting the Asian American community that preceded the shooting and that have continued in its wake. We stand in solidarity with the victims of these hate crimes, and with all of AACC's Asian and Asian American members and staff.