Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Winter 1-1-2011
Abstract
This article is based on the 2010 Dienard Memorial Lecture on Law and Medicine at University of Minnesota and part of a larger book project, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century (The New Press, 2011). In June 2005, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first pharmaceutical indicated for a specific race. Its racial label elicited three types of criticism – scientific, commercial, and political. I discuss the first two controversies en route to what I consider the main problem with race-based medicine – its political implications. By claiming that race, a political grouping, is important to the marketing of drugs and that race-based drugs can reduce health disparities, which are caused primarily by social inequality, those who promote racialized medicine have made this a political issue. Yet, having made these political claims, these very advocates answer criticism by saying we must put aside social justice concerns in order to improve minority health. This article explains why marketing pharmaceuticals on the basis of race is more likely to worsen racial inequities than cure them.
Publication Title
Minnesota Journal of Law, Science, and Technology
Repository Citation
Roberts, Dorothy E., "What’s Wrong with Race-Based Medicine?" (2011). All Faculty Scholarship. 435.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/435
Included in
Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons, Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Food and Drug Law Commons, Health and Medical Administration Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons, Medical Jurisprudence Commons, Public Health Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons
Publication Citation
12 Minnesota Journal of Law, Science, and Technology 1 (2011)