The First Race-Based Medicine BiDil Are Black Americans Encountering Another “Tuskegee Experiment"?

"Are misguided scientists and greedy pharmaceutical companies, purposely confusing the social construct of race and the biology of genetics for monetary gain by marketing BiDil as a drug specifically for black Americans?"

Recently the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel recommended the approval of a heart drug called BiDil to be specifically used for African-Americans. This is making way for the first drug ever manufactured and marketed based on race.
BiDil which is a combination of two generic drugs was tested several years ago and its usefulness at the time was deemed as inconclusive for use in the general population by the FDA.

The drug's maker, NitroMed, a small Massachusetts company, however noticed that BiDil seemed to work best in persons who were self-identified as black American.

NitroMed used this as an opportunity to perform a less costly study exclusively focusing on self-identified black Americans and determined that BiDil significantly reduced the death rate in black heart patients.

NitroMed stands to gain even more, if BiDil is approved for use as a race based medicine. If approved the patent for BiDil as a general use medicine would only last until 2007. But if BiDil is approved as a specialized race based medicine NitroMed’s patent will be extended until 2020.

With there being an historical paucity of concern for black American health care and with so much financial gain to be made by NitroMed and its backers, there is an eerie silence in the black community about BiDil.

Let me among the first black Americans to ask some tough questions and make some important observations.

Are misguided scientists and greedy pharmaceutical companies, purposely confusing the social construct of race and the biology of genetics for monetary gain by marketing BiDil as a drug specifically for black Americans?
I can understand how some medications can be designed for persons who have a very specific genetic background.

Moreover, the next and most promising frontier for medicine will be individualized therapies based on the unique biology of an individual or an isolated genetically same group of human beings.

However, black Americans are not an isolated genetic group. To the contrary, black Americans are probably one of the most genetically diverse groups of people who have ever existed.

Black Americans beyond having an eclectic genetic connection to the multiple peoples who inhabit West Africa, many black Americans have both European and Native American ancestry.

And let us not fail to mention about blacks immigrating from Africa and the Caribbean to the United States, who become “black Americans”, once they reach these shores. Are medications made for “black Americans” beneficial to the newest arriving black Americans?

My brother, who is a black American, suffers with idiopathic torsion dystonia, a neurological movement disorder that has its highest incidence among the European Jewry. Many of his doctor’s are baffled that a black man has this rare disease, until they probe for my brother’s less obvious genetic history.

Our maternal great grandfather was a German Jew. Many black Americans have similar mixed ethnic identities, although we are socially and self-identified as black Americans.

We must be careful that the development of race based drugs like BiDil is not directed by misguided science and unabashed greed.
I hope that scientists are not confusing the social construct of race with the biology of genetics.

I also hope that pharmaceutical companies are not purposely fusing race and genetics for their selfish monetary gain.

The sudden concern by both the scientific community and pharmaceutical companies in the cardiovascular health of black Americans is curious, especially when one considers the “cash cow” that BiDil will become for each of those communities.

Scientists, health professionals, and concerned lay people must work to ensure that BiDil will not become a 21st century medical catastrophe for black Americans, like the earlier Tuskegee Experiment.

If BiDil is inappropriately marketed as a drug for black American heart patients, the negative consequences may be long-term.

The inappropriate marketing of BiDil to the African-American community may lead to an unanticipated further suspicion of the health care system by black Americans.

Moreover, if BiDil is a marketing ruse, it could inadvertently set back more hardcore genetic research and the promise of its results.

DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE:http://b4.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?user=BeninDakar