First Race-Specific Medication

[J.B]

FDA approves first race-specific medication

 

Studies found drug benefited blacks, not general population

 

•FDA Recommends Approval of BiDil for CHF in African-Americans

An FDA advisory panel recommended today that BiDil, a new heart failure drug, should be approved for African Americans.

Physicians

 

Updated: 8:28 p.m. ET June 23, 2005

WASHINGTON - The heart failure drug BiDil was approved Thursday by government regulators for use by blacks. It will be the first medication marketed for a specific racial group.

 

The Food and Drug Administration called the approval a step toward “the promise of personalized medicine.”

 

But some medical experts say there could be a downside to approving medicine for specific races of people.

 

“There are many, many who claim these use of (racial) categories may not have any biological meaning, only social meaning, and basing medical decisions on them may be problematic,” said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics.

 

For example, Magnus said, researchers could also look at whether a particular drug worked more effectively on Catholics than Protestants. The more categories explored, the more likely one can find data showing that one category of people is helped more than the others when it comes to a particular medicine, he said.

 

“But the more we know genetically, the more we know these social categories don’t correspond to genetic groups,” Magnus said.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8336206/

 

Don't you just love our diversity?

[Queso]

hahahaha

 

the FDA is so corrupt.

[Biochemist]

hahahaha

 

the FDA is so corrupt.

This is not corruption, it is data. If blacks respond differentially, they are approved for use.

 

Pretending that we should not differentiate subcategories based on data is political correctness, not science.

[Bio-Hazard]

“the promise of personalized medicine.”

:)

 

Whatever works though, works.

[Ganoderma]

isnt it possible that people seperated for thousands of years (africa from asia for example) have some genetic differences? bone structure alone seem rather different....is that all?

[Boerseun]

I can't find anything wrong with this. Matter of fact, in South Africa, different races following the same lifestyle and diet die statistically of different causes.

For instance, the white Afrikaners (mostly of German, Dutch and French extraction) in this country suffers from heart defects almost 50% more than whites of English heritage. Blacks in the middle to upper middle class rarely suffer heart defects, although their fat and protein intake might be higher, their cholestrol levels are considerably lower than whites following comparable diets/lifestyles.

 

The problem here is that everybody (including scientists and medical researchers) are terrified to death of being labelled a 'racist'. The difference starts already at skin-level. Whites in Africa croak from skin cancer left right and center. Nobody finds that surprising. Who's to say there aren't any deeper differences? What should account for the different stats as set out above? Scientists shouldn't follow political correctness. Scientists should follow data.

[ronthepon]

Finding racism here is quite silly in my opinion. More like searching for a reason to get irritated.

 

I agree with Boerseun wholeheartedly.

[UncleAl]

Race-specific pharmacology is old as the hills. During thoracic or abdominal surgery you will be administered a powerful muscle relaxant. If you are of European descent it will last about 5 hours. If you are an Amerindian you are missing a plasma esterase and it will last about 5 days. That is a long time to be wide awake, totally paralyzed, and on a respirator. Blacks have nasty responses to tricyclic psychomeds. Redheads are resistant to anesthesia.

 

Everybody has the same average intelligence! Social advocacy demands it in the face of more than a century of massive counterexamples. 45 years of Head Start, now costing $8+ billion/year, sum to perfect failure even in Dept of Education studies. Needs more funding.

 

Race-specific pharmacology is racist. Prescribe everybody the same doses of the same meds and let freedom ring. The escalating body count wll be hate language.