Would it be better to let people die rather than face up to the fact of very real genetic differences between the races?
From Forbes:
A flood of studies has emerged showing racial differences in how patients suffer from disease–or benefit from drugs–in ailments ranging from osteoporosis to cancer. And several more have looked at the effects of drugs on particular racial groups. Many of the doctors conducting the studies are African-American.
There is even evidence that some drugs work differently in women than in men. For instance, aspirin seems to prevent heart attacks and cause strokes in low-risk medicine, but a controversial study showed it did the opposite in women. “There is nothing in evolutionary biology more based on genetics than whether the embryo develops into a man or into woman. But people generally haven’t studied drugs this way,” says Harvard researcher Paul Ridker.
Part of the problem is that clinical trials have too often focused on white men. Over the years African-Americans, in particular, have been absent from many trials.
“Much of the data we have on medicines in general have been in white populations,” says Keith C. Ferdinand, a pharmacology professor at Xavier University. “How do we know that any of this is true across the board?” asks Gary Butts, an associate dean at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
For many drugs, just doing a study looking at the effects of medicines on African-Americans might be useful. Ferdinand conducted such a trial with Crestor, a cholesterol drug from AstraZeneca. Patrick Griffith, a neurologist at the Morehose School of Medicine, conducted a trial of Aricept, the Pfizer and Eisai Alzheimer’s medicine, in African-Americans. Both studies, funded by the manufacturers, found the drugs to be effective in those populations.
But issues emerged from cases where racial groups are compared, and differences are found. The labeling for AstraZeneca’s cholesterol drug Crestor suggests starting the drug at a lower dose in Asians. Another AstraZeneca drug, the lung cancer pill Iressa, failed to extend life in a clinical trial but seems to have worked in Asians…
Jackson T. Wright, a cardiologist at Case Western Reserve University who co-authored the study, says that as firms like Novartis and Merck develop new blood pressure medicines, they should be careful to look at racial subgroups.
“I have yet to see a downside to doing studies that might point out differences in populations,” Wright says. “One could always envision potential harm, but thus far that has not been a major concern.”
