Facts and Fictions: BiDil and the Resurgence of Racial Medicine

Satel S. , “I Am a Racial Profiling Doctor: Illness Isn't Colorblind. So Why Is It Taboo for Doctors to Take Note of a Patient's Race?” New York Times Magazine, May 5, 2002, 56–58, at 58.

Witten M. , “Humpy Dumpty,” House MD, Fox Television, aired September 27, 2005, available at <http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/house/season2/house-203.htm> (last visited May 14, 2008). I learned of this episode in Braun L. Fausto-Sterling A. Fullwiley D. Hammonds E. M. Nelson A. Quivers W. Reverby S. M. Shields A. E. , “Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They?” PLoS Medicine 4, no. 9 (September 2007): 1423–1428, at 1423.

Warner J. H. , “The Idea of Southern Medical Distinctiveness: Medical Knowledge and Practice in the Old South,” in Leavitt J. W. Numbers R. L. , eds., Sickness and Health in America, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985): 53–70.

Jones D. S. , Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality Since 1600 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004): at 177.

Clinton W. J. , “Remarks on the Completion of the First Survey of the Entire Human Genome Project,” June 26, 2000, National Archives and Records Administration, available at <http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/New/html/genome-20000626.html> (last visited May 14, 2008).

Kalow W. Goedde H. W. Agarwal D. P. , ed., Ethnic Differences in Reactions to Drugs and Xenobiotics (New York: Alan R. Liss, Inc., 1986).

Pollock A. , “Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007; see also the article by Keith C. Ferdinand in this issue.

This history largely follows the narrative outlined in Kahn J. , “How a Drug Becomes Ethnic,” Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 4, no. 1 (2004): 1–46.

Carson P. , “Racial Differences in Response to Therapy for Heart Failure: Analysis of the Vasodilator-Heart Failure Trials,” Journal of Cardiac Failure 5, no. 3 (1999): 178–187.

Taylor A. L. , “Combination of Isosorbide Dinitrate and Hydralazine in Blacks with Heart Failure,” New England Journal of Medicine 351, no. 20 (November 11, 2004): 2049–2057.

Saul S. , “2 Officials Quit among Slow Sales of Heart Drug for African Americans,” New York Times, March 22, 2006.

Kahn J. , “How a Drug Becomes ‘Ethnic’: Law, Commerce, and the Production of Racial Categories in Medicine,” Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 4, no. 1 (2004): 1–46; Sankar P. Kahn J. , “BiDil: Race Medicine or Race Marketing?” Health Affairs, Web exlusive (October 11, 2005): W5–455–W5–463; Kahn J. , “BiDil: False Promises,” GeneWatch 18, no. 6 (2005): E-version; Kahn J. , “Exploiting Race in Drug Development: BiDil's Interim Model of Pharmacogenomics,” Social Studies of Science (forthcoming 2008).

Gallene D. , “Heart Pill Intended Only for Blacks Sparks Debate,” Los Angles Times, June 16, 2005.

See Saul , supra note 11.

In 2007, the Center for the Study of Diversity hosted a conference entitled “The Business of Race and Science.” Even though we steered clear of BiDil when accepting papers, BiDil again dominated the discussions. Defenders of BiDil suggested that social scientists, by casting doubt on the biological validity of the concept of race, had enabled the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Studies to withhold reimbursement for BiDil. From their perspective, we seemed to want to kill black people by denying them access to a beneficial drug. For a discussion of this exchange and its rhetoric, see Pollock , supra note 7, at 306–311.

Winstein K. J. , “NAACP Presses U.S. on Heart Drug,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2007.