Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T02:07:58.544Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Use of Race and Ethnicity in Medicine: Lessons from the African-American Heart Failure Trial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Jay N. Cohn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The practice of using race or ethnic origin as a distinguishing feature of populations or individuals seeking health care is a universal and well-accepted custom in medicine. Although the origin of this practice may, in part, reflect past prejudicial attitudes, its use today can certainly be defended as a useful means of improving diagnostic and therapeutic efforts. Indeed, the tradition of dividing populations by some racial distinction in clinical research has nearly always revealed differences in mechanisms of disease and disease frequency that can enhance diagnostic and therapeutic precision.

At the conference occasioning this symposium, Professors Duster and Rotimi provided persuasive evidence that so-called race is not an accurate way to distinguish populations and that identification by race has led to serious prejudice. Professor Cho pleaded that race should never be used to characterize population differences.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , Fall 2006 , pp. 552 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2006

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

See the conference video at <www.lifesci.consortium.umn.edu/conferences/conferences.php> (last visited April 19, 2006); Duster, T., “Lessons from History: Why Race and Ethnicity Have Played a Major Role in Biomedical Research.” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 34, no. 3 (2006): 487–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See conference video, supra note 1; Cho, M. K., “Racial and Ethnic Categories in Biomedical Research: There Is No Baby in the Bathwater,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 34, no. 3 (2006): 497–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, J. N. Julius, S. Neutel, J. Weber, M. Turlapaty, P. Shen, Y. Dong, V. Batchelor, A. Guo, W., and Lagast, H., “Clinical Experience with Perindopril in African-American Hypertensive Patients: A Large United States Community Trial,” American Journal of Hypertension 17 (2004): 134–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See conference video, supra note 1; Roberts, D. E., “Legal Constraints on the Use of Race in Biomedical Research: Toward a Social Justice Framework,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 34, no. 3 (2006): 526–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, J. N., “Lumpers Versus Splitters,” Journal of Cardiac Failure 6 (2000): 75–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, A. L. Ziesche, S. Yancy, C. Carson, P. D'Agostino, R. Jr. Ferdinand, K. Taylor, M. Adams, K. Sabolinski, M., M. Worcel, and J. N. Cohn for the African-American Heart Failure Trial Investigators, “Combination of Isosorbide Dinitrate and Hydralazine in Blacks with Heart Failure,” New England Journal of Medicine 351 (2004): 2049–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yancy, C. W., “Heart Failure in African-Americans: A Cardiovascular Enigma,” Journal of Cardiac Failure 6 (2000): 183–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carson, P. Ziesche, S., G. Johnson, and J. N. Cohn for the Vasodilator-Heart Failure Trial Study Group, “Racial Differences in Response to Therapy for Heart Failure: Analysis of the Vasodilator-Heart Failure Trials,” Journal of Cardiac Failure 5 (1999): 178–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See conference video, supra note 1; Bloche, M. G., “Race, Money & Medicines,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 34, no. 3 (2006): 555–558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, J. N., “Evidence-Based Medicine: What Is the Evidence?” Journal of Cardiac Failure 2 (1996): 159–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar