Race-Based Medicine Continued…
The New York Times
November 14, 2004
By NICHOLAS WADE
RESEARCHERS last week described a new drug, called BiDil, that sharply reduces death from heart disease among African-Americans. That sounds like unalloyed good news, especially because African-Americans have been underrepresented in previous drug trials and because there is already an important class of heart drug that does not work as well in blacks as it does in whites.
But not everyone is cheering unreservedly. Many people, including some African-Americans, have long been uneasy with the concept of race-based medicine, in part from fear that it may legitimize less benign ideas about race.
Note that there are no questions being raised as to how to define “black” versus “nonblack.”