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12 Minn. J.L. Sci. & Tech. 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/mipr12 and id is 1 raw text is: Roberts DE. What's Wrong with Race-Based Medicine?: Genes, Drugs, and Health Disparities. Minnesota Journal ofLaw, Science & Technology. 2011;12(1):1-21. Articles What's Wrong with Race-Based Medicine?: Genes, Drugs, and Health Disparities Dorothy E. Roberts* I. INTRODUCTION In June 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a historic decision: it approved the first pharma- ceutical indicated for a specific race.1 BiDil, a combination drug that relaxes the blood vessels, was authorized to treat heart failure in self-identified black patients. BiDil had been tested in the African-American Heart Failure Trial (A-HeFT) launched in 2001.2 A-HeFT enrolled 1,050 subjects suffering from ad- vanced heart failure, all self-identified African Americans. A- HeFT showed that BiDil worked; in fact, it worked so spectacu- larly that the trial was stopped ahead of schedule. BiDil in- creased survival by an astonishing 43 percent.3 Hospitaliza- tions were reduced by 39 percent.4 It was a momentous C 2011 Dorothy E. Roberts. *Kirkland & Ellis Professor, Northwestern University School of Law; faculty fellow, Institute for Policy Research. This article is based on the 2009-2010 Deinard Memorial Lecture on Law & Medicine, delivered February 3, 2010. It is part of a larger book project, FATAL INVENTION: How SCIENCE, POLITICS, AND BIG BUSINESS RE-CREATE RACE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (forth- coming, The New Press, 2011), supported by the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Kirkland & Ellis Fund. I thank SJ Chapman for her assistance in preparing this article. 1. Press Release, U.S. Food and Drug Admin., FDA Approves BiDil Heart Failure Drug for Black Patients (June 23, 2005), available at http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/2005/ucm10 8445.htm. 2. See Ann L. Taylor et al., Combination of Isosorbide Dinitrate and Hy- dralazine in Blacks with Heart Failure, 351 NEW ENG. J. MED. 2049, 2049 (2004). 3. Press Release, supra note 1. 4. Id.; see also Common Questions: BiDil and the African American Heart Failure Trial (A-HeFT), http://www.bidil.com/pnt/questions.php#l (last visited October 31, 2010). 1

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