Jonathan Khan is the author of Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age. His book was reviewed by Anne Pollock, and I found the content of this book review really interesting — so I thought I’d share it here. This book is in line with the route I’ve been following, of race and genetics (expanding to race and medicine here).

In 2005, BiDil was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for heart failure in black patients. It became the first drug to ever be approved with a racial indication. The purpose of this is explained by Khan:

“Race enters biomedicine through many pathways. Foremost among these are federal initiatives that shape the production and use of racial categories in biomedical research.”

– Johnathan Khan, Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age (pg. 25)

Race in a Bottle focuses on two main topics: the racial part of BiDil’s approval, and using racialized medicine in pharmacogenomics. Pharmacogenomics, for reference, is the “study of how a person’s unique genetic makeup (genome) influences his or her response to medications,” as described by the Mayo Clinic. Khan reveals how BiDil was initially developed for all patients with heart failure, not just those identifying as black. This notion is furthered by the evidence that the patent on BiDil, without the racial aspect, was about to expire — which led Khan to believe that because there was no convincing scientific evidence about the benefits of BiDil to the black community specifically, and the racial aspect of BiDil was only included to allow that company legal rights to the drug for an extended period of time. In addition, BiDil could be distributed by pharmacies to any individual self-identifying as black, which reinforced the idea that the racial aspect of BiDil was solely for legal purposes — and also helped support Khan’s idea that this example of racialized medicine in pharmacogenomics has no basis in science.

I suspect that in future blogs that follow this theme, the idea that race has no basis in scientific trials will be reinforced, as well as how race really only plays a part in the marketing and legal aspect of medicine. We’ll see how that theory plays out! Thanks for reading!