Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T06:29:05.525Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Genotyping the Future: Scientists' Expectations about Race/Ethnicity after BiDil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Richard Tutton ,
Andrew Smart ,
Paul A. Martin ,
Richard Ashcroft  and
George T. H. Ellison
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a recent discussion about how scientific knowledge might potentially change our understanding of the nature and extent of human genetic, cultural, or biological variation, the sociologist David Skinner identified two competing visions of the future: one that was decidedly dystopian, which conjured up a “re-racialized” future, and an opposing utopian future in which the potential for racialized thinking might be finally overcome. We can situate the ongoing debates about the congestive heart failure drug BiDil, approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use only by African Americans, in relation to these differing future prospects.

When the FDA announced its approval of BiDil in June 2005, it located the drug, and perhaps the future of pharmaceutical development, within a particular vision of the future, heralding BiDil as “representing a step toward the promise of personalized medicine.” The discourse of “personalized medicine” can be characterized as part of a utopian future, one in which clinicians will be able to make increasingly individualized decisions based on each patient’s genetic makeup so that the drugs they take will be those that work best for them.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , Fall 2008 , pp. 464 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Skinner, D., “Racialised Futures: Biologism and the Changing Politics of Identity,” Social Studies of Science 36, no. 3 (2006): 459–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Federal Food and Drug Administration, “FDA Approves BiDil Heart Failure Drug for Black Patients,” available at <http://www.fda.gov/> (last visited June 2, 2008).+(last+visited+June+2,+2008).>Google Scholar
Duster, T., “Race and Reification in Science,” Science 307, no. 18 (2005): 1050–1051.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, J. D., “From Disparity to Difference: How Race-Specific Medicines May Undermine Policies to Address Inequalities in Health Care,” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 15, no. 105 (2006): 105–130.Google Scholar
See Duster, , supra note 3.Google Scholar
Id.Google Scholar
See Kahn, , supra note 4.Google Scholar
Roses, A. D., “Pharmacogenetics and Drug Development: The Path to Safer and More Effective Drugs,” Nature Reviews Genetics 5, no. 9 (2004): 645–656.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D. and Wajcman, J., The Social Shaping of Technology (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Brown, N. and Michael, M., “A Sociology of Expectations: Retrospecting Prospects and Prospecting Retrospects,” Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 15, no. 1 (2003): 3–18; Michael, M., “Futures of the Present: From Performativity to Prehension,” in Brown, N., Rappert, B., and Webster, A., eds., Contested Futures: A Sociology of Prospective Technoscience (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smart, A. and Martin, P. A., “The Promise of Pharmacogenetics: Assessing the Prospects for Disease and Patient Stratification,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37, no. 3 (2006): 583–601; Hedgecoe, A. and Martin, P., “The Drugs Don’t Work: Expectations and the Shaping of Pharmacogenetics,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 3 (2003): 327–364; Schwartz, J., “Pharmacogenetics: Has It Reached the Clinic?” Journal of Gender Specific Medicine 5, no. 2 (2002): 13–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See Brown, and Michael, , supra note 10.Google Scholar
See Michael, , supra note 10.Google Scholar
Ellison, G. T. H., “Population Profiling and Public Health Risk: When and How Should We Use Race/Ethnicity?” Critical Public Health 15, no. 1 (2005): 65–74; Bamshad, M., Wooding, S., Salisbury, B. A., and Stephens, J. C., “Deconstructing the Relationship between Genetics and Race,” Nature Reviews Genetics 5, no. 8 (2004): 598–609; Bhopal, R., Rankin, J., and Bennett, T., “Editorial Role in Promoting Valid Use of Concepts and Terminology in Race and Ethnicity Research,” Science Editor 23, no. 3 (2000): 75–80; Williams, D. R., “Race and Health: Basic Questions, Emerging Directions,” Annals of Epidemiology 7, no. 5 (1997): 322–333; Witzig, R., “The Medicalization of Race: Scientific Legitimization of a Flawed Social Construct,” Annals of Internal Medicine 125, no. 8 (1996): 675–679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellison, G. T. H. and Jones, I. R., “Social Identities and the ‘New Genetics’: Scientific and Social Consequences,” Critical Public Health 12, no. 3 (2002): 265–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holden, C., “Race and Medicine,” Science 302, no. 5645 (2003): 594–596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, M. W., Sharp, R. R., and Mulvihill, J. J., “Pharmacogenetics, Race, and Ethnicity: Social Identities and Individualised Medical Care,” Therapeutic Drug Monitoring 23, no. 3 (2001): 232–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jorde, L. B. and Wooding, S. P., “Genetic Variation, Classification and ‘Race,’” Nature Genetics 36, no. 11, Supplement (2004): S28–S33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, M. W., Sharp, R. R., and Mulvihill, J. J., “Pharmacogenetics, Race, and Ethnicity: Social Identities and Individualised Medical Care,” Therapeutic Drug Monitoring 23, no. 3 (2001): 232–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Some key publications from this research include: Smart, A., Tutton, R., Ashcroft, R., Martin, P., and Ellison, G. T. H., “Can Science Alone Improve the Measurement and Communication of Race and Ethnicity in Genetic Research? Exploring the Strategies Proposed by Nature Genetics,” BioSocieties 1, no. 3 (2006): 307–318; Tutton, R., “Opening the White Box: Exploring Categories of Whiteness in UK Genetic Databases,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, no. 4 (2007): 557–569; Ellison, G. T. H., Smart, A., Tutton, R., Outram, S. M., Ashcroft, R., and Martin, P., “Racial Categories in Medicine: A Failure of Evidence-Based Practice?” Public Library of Science Medicine 4, no. 9 (2007): 1434–1436; Martin, P., Ashcroft, R., Ellison, G. T. H., Smart, A., and Tutton, R., Reviving ‘Racial Medicine’? The Use of Race/Ethnicity in Genetics and Biomedical Research, and the Implications for Science and Healthcare (London: St. George's/University of London, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Several interviewees introduced the topic of the FDA approval of BiDil in the course of their interviews and, as the interviewer, Richard Tutton took the opportunity to ask several interviewees what if any issues this had raised for them as scientists in the field of pharmacogenetics. The impact of the BiDil approval on medical practice in the U.K. and how British-based scientists and doctors frame the issues that it raises are interesting questions. Lying outside the focus of the current paper, this will be a concern of future research.Google Scholar
To preserve the anonymity of interviewees we use these codes (PGx01, etc.) for the benefit of the reader to distinguish between our different respondents.Google Scholar
Smart, A., Tutton, R., Martin, P., Ellison, G. T. H., and Ashcroft, R., “The Standardization of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Science Editorials and UK Biobanks,” Social Studies of Science, 38, no. 3 (2008): 407–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bacanu, S.-A., Devlin, B., and Roeder, K., “The Power of Genomic Control,” American Journal of Human Genetics 66, no. 6 (2000): 1933–1944; “Genomic control” is a technique that uses unlinked genetic markers to adjust for potential confounding from gene-gene interactions within genetically stratified study populations.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stassen, H. H., Hoffman, K., and Scharfetter, C., “Similarity by State/Descent and Genetic Vector Spaces: Analysis of a Longitudinal Family Study,” BioMed Central Genetics 4, no. S (2003): S59–S65.Google Scholar
See Jorde, and Wooding, , supra note 18.Google Scholar