History of Science and Technology Colloquium

This presentation endeavors to place into context recent developments surrounding the United States Food and Drug Administration recent approval of BiDil as the first ever race-specific drug—in this case to treat heart failure in African Americans. It traces the development of BiDil, from its origins in the 1980's and explores how practices of law, commerce and science and intertwined to transform BiDil from a drug to treat everyone regardless of race into a racially marked—and marketed—pharmaceutical. It focuses in particular on both commercial incentives and statistical manipulation of medical data as framing the drive to bring BiDil to market as a race-specific drug. In current discourse about pharmacogenomics, targeting a racial audience is perceived as necessary because at this point the technology and resources do not exist to scan efficiently every individual's genetic profile. The presentation argues that medical researchers may say they are using race as a surrogate to target biology in drug development, but corporations are using biology as a surrogate to target race in drug marketing.

Sponsored by the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.