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“Special Treatment”: BiDil, Tuskegee, and the Logic of Race

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Susan M. Reverby
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Extract

The presence of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was palpable at the June 16, 2005, Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Advisory Committee meeting on BiDil, a heart medication from the pharmaceutical company NitroMed that sought approval as the first race-specific drug. So ubiquitous is the restless and unsettled spirit of Tuskegee that it continues to hover over the African American public and the biomedical research/health care provider communities more than three and a half decades after the actual study “died.” No one invoked the word “Tuskegee” in that dimly lit meeting room as BiDil gained the Advisory Committee’s approval. Yet its power was exerted even when it was not named. The FDA Committee’s chairman, Cleveland Clinic cardiology chief Steven Nissen, acknowledged this after the committee met: “We were putting [Tuskegee]…to rest.”

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , Fall 2008 , pp. 478 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2008

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References

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