When will Asian-Americans get their own drug?
After all the debate, the FDA’a cardiovascular advisory committee has recommended that the FDA approve BiDil, the heart drug for African-Americans. (Red Herring, June 16, 2005) That leaves me wondering when Asian-Americans are going to get a drug to call their own.
The trouble is, I’m not sure I want to get a drug that’s supposed to work only in Asian-Americans. First of all, Asians make up a heterogeneous group that includes people from West Asia (Iraq, Iran), South Asia (India), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam), and East Asia (China, Japan). (Wikipedia) I happen to be 100% Chinese and don’t want to be lumped in with everyone else.
Even though I am 100% Chinese, my father’s family is from Northern China (Shandong province) and my mother’s family is Taiwanese. Chinese people believe that Northern Chinese differ greatly from Southern Chinese. The differences extend beyond culture. There are noticeable physical differences - Northern Chinese tend to be bigger and taller than Southern Chinese. Over many generations, the different environments of North and South China/Taiwan have surely led to some genetic differences due to selective mating and other genetic factors.
Another complicating issue - my family immigrated to the U.S. when I was six years old. Because of the change in environment and diet, I am most likely bigger (ok, I admit it, fatter) than what I would probably have been had we stayed in Taiwan. Given the interaction between genes and environment, my body would respond differently to drugs than my friends who were born and bred in Taiwan. In fact, many Chinese-Americans like me who have received medical treatment in Asia usually prefer to go to doctors who are familiar with the physiology of foreigners and prescribe larger doses of medication.
Immigrants like my family often have family members who intermarry with non-Asians. How will the children of parents who are not of the same race be treated and how will their genetic make-up affect their treatment? Categorizing them as Asian-Americans would ignore the other half (or quarter, eighth, etc.) of their genetic heritage.
Amy Barrett of Business Week writes,
Until such mysteries are solved, researchers will sometimes have to use the blunt instrument of race to help match patients with the right drugs. And that, ultimately, will help patients of all races. While a gene that makes someone respond positively to a drug may be more common in one race, it will certainly pop up in individuals in other ethnic groups as well. More study — not less — is the key to moving toward an era of personalized medicine.
While I think Barrett makes a good point, I would still be wary of any doctor who tries to categorize me based on a fuzzy and ill-defined characteristic like race. Hopefully, doctors truly believe in personalized medicine and will keep all the many aspects of my physical and psychological attributes into account when deciding treatment that’s right for me.
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6 opinions for When will Asian-Americans get their own drug?
Benin Dakar
Jun 20, 2005 at 12:36 pm
Re: The BiDil the First Race-Based Medicine
Are Black Americans Encountering Another “Tuskegee" Experiment?
I can understand how some medications can be designed for persons who have a very specific genetic background. However, black Americans are not an isolated racial group. To the contrary, black Americans are probably one of the most genetically diverse groups of people who have ever existed.
Black Americans beyond having an eclectic genetic connection to the multiple peoples who inhabit West Africa, many black Americans have both European and Native American ancestry. And let us not fail to mention about blacks immigrating from Africa and the Caribbean to the United States, who become “black Americans”, once they reach these shores. Are medications made for “black Americans” beneficial to the newest arriving black Americans?
My brother, who is a black American, suffers with idiopathic torsion dystonia, a neurological movement disorder that has its highest incidence among the European Jewry. Many of his doctor’s are baffled that a black man has this rare disease, until they probe for my brother’s known genetic history. Our maternal great grandfather was a German Jew. Many black Americans have similar mixed ethnic identities, although we are socially and self-identified as black Americans.
We must be careful that the development of race based drugs like BiDil is not directed by misguided science. I hope that scientists are not allowing mistaken perceptions of race and pharmaceutical companies their greed to cloud the scientific process, by incorrectly manufacturing and marketing drugs based on race.
Moreover, we must ensure that the black community is not used for 21st Century medical experimentation, like blacks were used in the Tuskeegee experiment.
Benin Dakar
Duluth, GA
Lei
Jun 20, 2005 at 10:27 pm
Thanks for the comment, Benin. You make some very important points. I certainly hope that BiDil won’t turn out to be a repeat of Tuskegee.
Krissy
Jun 22, 2005 at 1:13 pm
I need for them to come out with a thin pill for overweight neurotic Italian, Polish, Scottish, Russian, English Americans, please.
I keloid. And I keloid because my family is Sicilian and bread across the Med freqently. I look absolutely white, but could scar myself ritually if I wanted to.
The problem that people always fail to adress is that while "Asia" is a place, "Black" is a color. And just like you point out, Hsien, if you’re "Asian" or "Western" or "European" or "African" you can be many different genetic codes within those enormous land masses.
Racial identities are understandable, but this strikes me as a bit ludicrous. If they discover how to prevent keloids, will I get the cure?
Lei
Jun 22, 2005 at 11:08 pm
Krissy, You’ll have to stand in line for a special drug made just for your group because the way things are going, only underprivileged, underserved minorities will get any attention from drug companies.
Krissy
Jun 23, 2005 at 2:28 pm
How sad is it that overweight and neurotic no longer grant me minority status?
Narconon Vista Bay
Mar 27, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Well, I guess overweight and neurotic people should be treated accordingly, but granting them minority status is a little too much if you ask me.
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