dear sir and about mix people?

>From: Jon Entine <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: To support research in sports medicine <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: The reality of "race"
>Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 10:05:03 -0500
>
>BiDil, "Race", and Constructive Discourse
>
>Hope those on the list have kept pace with the news this past week on the
>breakthrough drug, BiDil, a heart pill that has shown amazing efficacy in
>those of African ancestry but apparently does little for whites and other
>population groups.
>
>Last Friday, I organized and presented at a conference on "Race and
>Medicine" in Washington, DC that was broadcast live on CSPAN (and repeated
>over the weekend..and apparently is still being repeated).
>
>The key note speaker, Keith Ferdinand, a renowned cardiologist, former head
>of the Association of Black Cardiologists, and co-author of the BiDil study
>that demonstrated the drug's efficacy on blacks, made it very clear that
>with lives on the line, particularly of minority populations, it's high 
>time
>we get beyond the ideological trap of trying to deny population-based
>differences.
>
>You might find his talk illuminating. Other speakers included William
>Lawson, a renowned Howard University psychiatrist who discussed metabolic
>differences between blacks and whites in handling psychotropic drugs, Dr.
>Sally Satel, who explained why she 'racially profiles her patients,' Dr.
>Pamela Shankar of the University of Pennsylvania, who expressed concerns
>about 're-biologizing race,' molecular geneticist Vincent Sarich, and me,
>who talked about "Jewish Genetic" disorders, one aspect of my upcoming 
>book,
>"Abraham's Children," on the shared genetics of Jews and Christians.
>
>An internal, one camera, video of the event should be posted today at:
>http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.937,filter.all,type.past/event_detail.asp#
>
>At this stage, anyone who continues to insist, in defiance of overwhelming
>evidence that 'race has no biological significance' is frankly endangering
>the health of various population groups, particularly minorities, for 
>purely
>ideological reasons. As a result of evolution, there are measurable
>differences between populations in SOME characteristics, such as response 
>to
>drugs, body type, physiology, etc. This has huge implications for science
>and medicine...and of course for those studying sports, where these 
>patterns
>have been clear for many years, and are now being linked to specific 
>aspects
>of the human genome.
>
>Let's hope those studying sports can quickly and thoughtfully integrate 
>this
>bio-cultural reality into our scholarship, instead of being slaves to
>outdate, polemical, ideological paradigms.
>
>There have been numerous press reports on this issue. The editorial
>reproduced below was written by Michael Crane of USA Today, who attended 
>the
>Friday forum, and quoted from it liberally in his article (alas, without
>attribution).
>
>--
>
>Jon Entine
>Miami University
>
>(513) 527-4385  FAX: 527-4386
>http://www.jonentine.com
>
>
>--
>
>Jon Entine
>Miami University
>
>(513) 527-4385  FAX: 527-4386
>http://www.jonentine.com
>
>
>****
>
>USA Today
>November 15, 2004
>Editorial/Opinion
>
>Our view: Racial diversity in drug trials can produce breakthroughs.
>
>  More than a decade ago, a howl went up about the way new drugs were 
>tested.
>Virtually all trials were limited to white males, even though some medical
>differences based on race are widely acknowledged. The Food and Drug
>Administration (FDA) ended that bias in 1997, when it required drugmakers 
>to
>test more ethnic groups and women.
>
>The fruits of the change surfaced last week. A study published in The New
>England Journal of Medicine found that a heart medication, BiDil, reduced
>death rates among black heart-failure patients almost in half. Previous
>research had shown blacks benefited from the drug, while whites didn't. But
>too few blacks were included in the study to draw firm conclusions. So the
>Association of Black Cardiologists helped set up a trial of 1,050 black
>patients.
>
>Now some ethicists are raising a new worry: Such race-specific testing 
>could
>open the door to discrimination in medical treatments and dangerous notions
>of genetic differences based on race, conjuring up the eugenic experiments
>of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.
>
>  That's a danger requiring vigilance. But in today's reality of medical
>research, the fear is no reason to turn back the clock to the days of
>all-white-male testing.
>
>Though research has found that 99.9% of human genetic composition is the
>same in everyone regardless of race, stark differences among ancestral
>groups exist. Ignoring them doesn't benefit patients. Consider:
>
>€ At least 29 drugs are known to work differently in blacks than in whites,
>according to a recent report in Nature Genetics. Blood pressure medicines
>that are standard for whites have decreased responsiveness in blacks. The
>FDA requires that information to be included in drug labeling.
>
>€ Some genetic diseases seem to target ethnic groups. Various breast cancer
>mutations are most common in Jews; cystic fibrosis disproportionately
>affects whites, and sickle cell anemia is more prevalent in blacks.
>
>Spotting medical trends among ethnic groups and targeting appropriate
>treatments make sense, whether the differences among groups are due to
>genetic makeup, environment or socioeconomic factors such as poverty and
>lack of access to health care.
>
>Mistrust about race-based medicine is understandable in light of past
>outrages, especially the U.S. Public Health Services' notorious Tuskegee,
>Ala., study. Beginning in 1932, hundreds of black men with syphilis were
>treated as guinea pigs for decades and denied penicillin in the name of
>scientific research.
>
>By contrast, the results of the new heart-drug study were so dramatic that
>the trial was halted abruptly in July so that patients getting the placebo
>could join those getting the medication.
>
>Denying scientifically determined racial differences in medical therapies
>because of ethical concerns only puts patients at risk. Blacks are twice as
>likely to die from heart failure as whites, according to the American Heart
>Association. Widespread use of the new drug by the 375,000 blacks with 
>heart
>failure could save 15,000 lives a year, researchers say.
>
>When all segments of society are included in clinical research, the result
>can be medical benefits too big to ignore.

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