Introduction: Facts and fictions: BiDil and the resurgence of racial medicine

Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics

Volumn 36, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 443-448

  Dorr, Gregory Michael ^a,b   Jones, David S ^c,d  

^a AMHERST COLLEGE   (United States)

^b MIT MEDIA LAB   (United States)

^c Dept of Elec Eng and Comp Sci

^d HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HYDRALAZINE; ISOSORBIDE DINITRATE; ISOSORBIDE HYDRALAZINE COMBINATION; ISOSORBIDE-HYDRALAZINE COMBINATION; VASODILATOR AGENT;

CONFERENCE PAPER; DRUG COMBINATION; ETHNOLOGY; HEART FAILURE; HUMAN; NEGRO;

AFRICAN CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP; DRUG COMBINATIONS; HEART FAILURE; HUMANS; HYDRALAZINE; ISOSORBIDE DINITRATE; VASODILATOR AGENTS;

EID: 50249184595     PISSN: 10731105     EISSN: 1748720X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2008.289.x     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (16)

1. S. Satel I Am a Racial Profiling Doctor: Illness Isn't Colorblind. So Why Is It Taboo for Doctors to Take Note of a Patient's Race New York Times Magazine, May 5, 2002, 56 58, at 58.
2. M. Witten Humpy Dumpty House MD, Fox Television, aired September 27, 2005, available at http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/house/season2/house-203.htm (last visited May 14, 2008). I learned of this episode in L. Braun, A. Fausto-Sterling, D. Fullwiley, E. M. Hammonds, A. Nelson, W. Quivers, S. M. Reverby, and A. E. Shields Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They PLoS Medicine 4, no. 9 (September 2007 1423 1428, at 1423.
3. J. H. Warner The Idea of Southern Medical Distinctive-ness: Medical Knowledge and Practice in the Old South in J. W Leavitt and R. L. Numbers, eds., Sickness and Health in America, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985 53 70.
4. D. S. Jones, Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality Since 1600 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004 at 177.
5. W J. Clinton Remarks on the Completion of the First Survey of the Entire Human Genome Project June 26, 2000, National Archives and Records Administration, available at http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/New/html/genome- 20000626.html (last visited May 14, 2008).
6. W Kalow, H. W Goedde, and D. P. Agarwal, ed., Ethnic Differences in Reactions to Drugs and Xenobiotics (New York: Alan R. Liss, Inc., 1986).
7. A. Pollock Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference Ph.D. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007 see also the article by Keith C. Ferdinand in this issue.
8. This history largely follows the narrative outlined in J. Kahn How a Drug Becomes Ethnic Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 4, no. 1 (2004 1 46.
9. P. Carson et al. Racial Differences in Response to Therapy for Heart Failure: Analysis of the Vasodilator-Heart Failure Trials Journal of Cardiac Failure 5, no. 3 (1999 178 187.
10. A. L. Taylor et al. Combination of Isosorbide Dinitrate and Hydralazine in Blacks with Heart Failure New England Journal of Medicine 351, no. 20 (November 11, 2004 2049 2057.
11. S. Saul 2 Officials Quit among Slow Sales of Heart Drug for African Americans New York Times, March 22, 2006.
12. J. Kahn How a Drug Becomes 'Ethnic': Law, Commerce, and the Production of Racial Categories in Medicine Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 4, no. 1 (2004 1 46 P. Sankar and J. Kahn BiDil: Race Medicine or Race Marketing Health Affairs, Web exlusive (October 11, 2005 W5-455-W5-463. J. Kahn BiDil: False Promises GeneWatch 18, no. 6 (2005 e-version J. Kahn Exploiting Race in Drug Development: BiDil's Interim Model of Pharmacogenomics Social Studies of Science (forthcoming 2008).
13. D. Gallene Heart Pill Intended Only for Blacks Sparks Debate Los Angles Times, June 16, 2005.
14. See Saul, supra note 11.
15. In 2007, the Center for the Study of Diversity hosted a conference entitled "The Business of Race and Science." Even though we steered clear of BiDil when accepting papers, BiDil again dominated the discussions. Defenders of BiDil suggested that social scientists, by casting doubt on the biological validity of the concept of race, had enabled the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Studies to withhold reimbursement for BiDil. From their perspective, we seemed to want to kill black people by denying them access to a beneficial drug. For a discussion of this exchange and its rhetoric, see Pollock, supra note 7, at 306-311.
16. K. J. Winstein NAACP Presses U.S. on Heart Drug Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2007.