User:Bananasae/sandbox

The new drug application claiming treatment of a single, self-identified racial group raised a storm of controversy. Some hailed the development of BiDil as a breakthrough for African Americans (such groups included the Black congressional Caucus, the Association of Black Caridologists, the National Medical Association, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and a step to addressing the unique health care needs and health disparities of the African American community.

Others who criticized the preliminary studies argued that the original study did not have a significant number of African-American subjects to make the BiDil's race specific claims, and that the results of only one clinical trial where African-Americans were tested does not provide a full and comprehensive study. Furthermore, critics argued that self-identified racial identifications from patients as an indicator for race during the trials were not a sufficient categorization method because these self-identifications were socially constructed and have no biological connection to genomic data.

They argued that the trials represented a new form of scientific racism where race, a socially constructed category that does not have a basis in biology, would continue to be present in research as a placeholder for genomic identification.

Additionally, some disagreed with the design of the A-HeFT trial because the trial failed to include any non-African American test subjects. The trial was designed to include only African American test subjects, therefore failing to show that BiDil has a greater effectiveness in African Americans than those in other races.