Scientists Debate Race, Genetics, and “Ethnic Medicine”
By Kevin Davies
Bio-IT World (online)
(10/29/04)—A leading geneticist warned that approval of BiDil, which has been proclaimed as the first “ethnic medicine,†would be premature without pharmacogenetic evaluation to validate reports of its enhanced effectiveness in African-Americans.
Speaking at the American Society of Human Genetics conference in Toronto, David Goldstein, University of College London geneticist, said: “If the [FDA] is seriously going to think about approving BiDil, they should first require a very substantial and serious pharmacogenetic effort to see if genetic determinants… might explain the [population] difference, and to search for environmental determinants, before you race forward for this medicine for one particular ethnic group.â€