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Medical Racism

Scientific racism has taken many different forms in the twenty-first century that had not previously been prevalent. A modern form of scientific racism is considered “medical racism.” Medical racism is defined as “prejudice and discrimination in medicine and the medical/healthcare system based upon perceived race .”The primary representation of this form of racism is the use of scientific racism to justify and shape discrimination in medicine. This discrimination is often based on the belief that the predisposition for certain diseases has a distinct correlation with genes and perceived divisions of race. Biological anthropologist Alan H. Goodman PhD, a prominent researcher in the field, that “Genes, of course, are often a part of the complex web of disease causality, but they are almost always a minor, unstable, and insufficient cause.” This statement serves to show that genetic differences in race have minimal, proof to demonstrate the likelihood of disease.

One specific example of racial discrimination in pharmaceuticals is NitroMed’s drug BiDil which caught publicity in 2006 as a controversy for medicines with racial dividers not only in mind, but in development and marketing. Many argue that the company uses scientific racism through the design and sales of the drug to African Americans. BiDil is congestive heart failure drug that is marketed to African Americans with the justification that they have more difficulty making and using nitric oxide than white people. In addition to the marketing exclusively to the African American demographic, it was only tested on this group resulting in uncertainty in how effective it is on different races. The primary source of criticism of BiDil is that it oversimplifies the biological dividers of race using science in order to commercialize the drug to African American individuals. Critics argue that it sets a precedent for other pharmaceutical companies and researchers to use similar manifestations of scientific racism and opens a market of race-specific drugs. It is the first modern example of a drug marketed directly to a certain racial population.

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The famous “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male ” is a historically significant example of the role of scientific racism in discriminatory experimentation. This study mistreated 600 African American males over forty years, beginning in 1932 and eventually stopping in 1972. 400 of these subjects had been diagnosed with latent syphilis while 200 were used as a control population. The subjects were never informed of this diagnosis and were never treated for their disease. Even when the widespread acceptance of penicillin as a curative medication was established in 1947, the subjects were only given placebo pills and their health continued to deteriorate. The study watched as the symptoms increased and the disease turned deadly. Only 74 men survived the study. The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the ‘Negro Male’ raised public concerns in the following years but was only officially condemned on May 16th, 1997 in a statement by President Bill Clinton. In his speech he offered profuse apologies including powerful statements such as “The United States government did something that was wrong — deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens.” and acknowledges the clearly racist basis of the study, “To our African American citizens, I am sorry that your federal government orchestrated a study so clearly racist. That can never be allowed to happen again. It is against everything our country stands for and what we must stand against is what it was.” This study was significant in bringing scientific racism to the public eye in the late twentieth century.