Black Drugs

Karama Neal, of So what can I do? fame - and one of our fav bloggers, points out that race-based pharma marketing is here, for better and worse. NitroMed's BiDil is a medicine aimed at the treatment of cardiovascular disease in African Americans. On the 16th it went before an FDA panel for approval. Karama asks, though, who is ...

"African-American." Does Tiger Woods qualify? Teresa Heinz-Kerry? Barack Obama? Michael Jackson? How will physicians know how to prescribe this drug. A better approach would be to identify the (presumably) genetic factors that affect BiDil's function. It's easier to just use race instead, but it's sloppy and not good medicine.

There's money at stake here.