Tyrel Colt Mortensen
Human Biology 1090
Taking Sides – Issue #7:
“Should Doctors Prescribe Drugs Based on Race?”
Sally Satel says that by using race as a tool to help evaluate a patients treatment options we can potentially provide them with better options. Using a persons race to determine anything about that person is a sensitive subject but if facts exist that support certain races respond to different treatments differently there is no reason to not use drugs based on race. Saving a life should not be placed second by anyone, except maybe the patient.
BiDil saves lives. There is no disputing that fact. While it has been mainly tested and prescribed to African American patients, it can also be prescribed to any race. The real issue with BiDil is that it is called an African American drug. If it was just known as a drug that happened to be prescribed more frequently, due to success, to African Americans there wouldn’t be such a fuss about it. It is also an issue that BiDil is not a unique drug. It is just a combination of two other drugs, hydralazine and isosorbide. This gives BiDil no definitive place in the market that can’t be filled by others that do not have the same label as race dependent.
Sally Satel uses quotes from other doctors to try and strengthen her position. She makes a claim that African Americans salivate more than other races. She later had to change her stance on this by saying that she hadn’t done any research herself on the topic. This makes you wonder what else she just threw out to support her claims. She herself also admits that using the color of a person’s skin is not a clear indication of their race. I feel that she could be more upfront with her patients and ask them their race, and explain why it potentially may be important in certain cases.
Satel doesn’t give a lot of facts with information about them. She tends to throw out numbers and say they are from some study, but never really gives any evidence that seems concrete. She relies on quotes from fellow doctors to help try and prove her side. Satel feels that if she were to not use race to help diagnose her patients and prescribe their treatment, she would not be doing her job as best as she could. When you look at the numbers she gives though, you see that she prescribes her African American patients half the dosage of Prozac. She claims this is because 40% of African Americans are slow metabolizers of antidepressants. This contradicts her point because that means she is only giving 40% of her African American patients the correct treatment while 60% are not getting the best treatment.
Gregory M. Dorr and David S. Jones feel the opposite from Satel. They feel that by using race to decide the proper treatment for a patient we are introducing racial discrimination back into our society. They feel that we should give the optimal treatment based on the person’s specific needs. Not focusing on their race at all. Dorr and Jones show us that BiDil was primarily tested on African Americans, and therefore can’t be shown that it should only be prescribed to African Americans. They also tell us how BiDil is just a combination of hydralazine and isosorbide, two drugs that are already in the market for doctors to prescribe. Dorr and Jones are worried that with BiDil being approved many other drugs will appear that they call copy-cat drugs. Meaning that they are just a combination of two other drugs rebranded and sold at higher prices.
Dorr and Jones make the mistake of trying to do the non-racist action that in turn could be interpreted as racist. By trying to get rid of using race as a means to prescribe medication they are denying people the potential opportunity to better recover from their conditions. This may, in some circumstances, be hazardous to the health of the patients they intend to defend. Denying a doctor the option to use race as a means to diagnose a patient is like not allowing a doctor to look at family history to do the same. Dorr and Jones seem to believe that Satel uses race in every decision she makes about a patient, or that her race based decisions are done in order to belittle the patient based on their race. These are both untrue, however. She is just trying to use information presented to her to better diagnose and treat her patients.
Dorr and Jones do a good job at presenting their reasons to not trust in BiDil, but they don’t do very well at persuading the reader to believe every drug that may come along as a racial based drug will be the same. They put most of their focus on telling the reader why BiDil is a bad idea, and little to point to how using race to diagnose or treat a patient can not be useful in certain circumstances. These two authors point out that we have fought hard to remove racial discrimination from our society. While it still exists we have come a long way. They feel that by allowing racial based drugs into the market we may be rekindling that discrimination. However, I believe there are things we can do to make this not the case. Such as accepting facts that even though a treatment is most successful in one race; it is still used with other races. Also, there will eventually be treatments that single out every race; it is not as if we are targeting only one race with these new drugs.
I felt that Dorr and Jones did the better job at presenting their side of the story. They gave factual evidence concerning the studies that were done with BiDil. They did seem to focus mainly on how BiDil shouldn’t exist as opposed to how racial based drugs shouldn’t exist as a whole. Satel did defend her case though. She is a professional in the industry and has others in the industry showing their support in her article. There was just not enough evidence that seemed irrefutable. Dorr and Jones had more facts that they backed up with proof. That all being said, Dorr and Jones did not give me enough to make me feel that all racial based drugs or diagnosis’s would be the same as BiDil.
I don’t believe that any of the authors had any reason to be biased. The only possibility I could see was for Satel to defend her methods. I feel they all have their beliefs on the topic and were only trying to defend and persuade their side of it.
I feel that in cases where a person’s race can influence their diagnosis or treatment in a positive way it should be taken into consideration. Like Satel states, healing a broken finger doesn’t have anything to do with race, and race is therefore unimportant. I feel that every person should be presented with the treatment that gives them the best option to recover, and if using someone’s race can aid in any way, I see no harm in that. So long as it is not in a negatively discriminating way.
Reflection
This assignment was a good experience. It gave me a look into a topic that I hadn't ever really given a second thought. While my opinion didn't exactly change on the topic, I do feel I have a much better understanding of the topic. From both sides. While I do support using race as a means to help diagnose or treat a patient I feel my true stance is somewhere in the middle. Where race is only used when needed and not in every situation. This way we get the benefits of using race to help save lives, without putting any race down. All races should be treated equally, but that doesn't mean that there are certain traits that are more common in a given race. By accepting this fact the same as we accept people with different color hair or eyes, we can accept people based on their race just the same. In almost all things in life there are pros and cons, a race is no different.