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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Brave New Worlds

Brave New Worlds

by John Cole|  November 11, 200510:06 am| 9 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology

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Yesterday, it was earlier detection of Down syndrome, today it is race-based medicine:

In a finding that is likely to sharpen discussion about the merits of race-based medicine, an Icelandic company says it has detected a version of a gene that raises the risk of heart attack in African-Americans by more than 250 percent.

The company, DeCode Genetics, first found the variant gene among Icelanders and then looked for it in three American populations, in Philadelphia, Cleveland and Atlanta.

Among Americans of European ancestry, the variant is quite common, but it causes only a small increase in risk, about 16 percent.

The opposite is true among African-Americans. Only 6 percent of African-Americans have inherited the variant gene, but they are 3.5 times as likely to suffer a heart attack as those who carry the normal version of the gene, a team of DeCode scientists led by Dr. Anna Helgadottir reported in an article released online yesterday by Nature Genetics.

Dr. Kari Stefansson, the company’s chief executive, said he would consult with the Association of Black Cardiologists and others as to whether to test a new heart attack drug specifically in a population of African-Americans.

Interesting times we live in.

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Reader Interactions

9Comments

  1. 1.

    Mr Furious

    November 11, 2005 at 10:11 am

    None of this is God’s will—stop it!

  2. 2.

    neil

    November 11, 2005 at 10:29 am

    You know, if they found a heart disease medication that only worked on white people, it wouldn’t be called “race-based medicine” .. it’d just be called “medicine.”

  3. 3.

    John Cole

    November 11, 2005 at 10:51 am

    Heh.

  4. 4.

    Lines

    November 11, 2005 at 10:55 am

    Frist already knew all about this, trust him, he’s a doctor.

  5. 5.

    Lines

    November 11, 2005 at 11:03 am

    Ok, snark aside, what happens when this is used, as sickle cell anemia was used (for those old enough to remember), to label blacks as “inferior”? It never going to be held in front of people’s faces as exactly that, but can race-based medicine work against the race that it is targetting to help the most?

    ooops, that damn tin-foil beany just keeps sliding around, I’ll get it fixed.

  6. 6.

    JohnGalt

    November 11, 2005 at 11:21 am

    Man, I’m all for this. MIT’s Science and Technology magazine did a fairly lengthy story about this a few months ago. This is only the first example of directed medicine, and if it means that more effective and targeted pharmaceuticals and treatments are developed by using genetic variations among the races, then fantastic.

    Ultimately, as the article postulated, the goal is to come up with a specific drug for an individual (a far more discrete grouping that just “race”). Some people react to a particular cancer drug better than others – the aim is to discover the genetic variations that dictate a drug’s efficacy, and prescribe the best one for the individual.

    I don’t see any downside to this. Certainly I don’t think there are the same ethical issues that arise from the earlier Down’s Syndrome detection discussed earlier.

  7. 7.

    Jon H

    November 11, 2005 at 11:41 am

    “It never going to be held in front of people’s faces as exactly that, but can race-based medicine work against the race that it is targetting to help the most?”

    The problem here is that it assumes white folks don’t have similar race-based ‘flaws’.

    There are problably medical conditions which white folks suffer more from than blacks do. (And I’m not talking about affluence-related conditions or sunburn.)

    However, that’s unlikely to come up in the media, because the lack of black victims will be drowned out by concern over the toll on “people”, without ever pointing out that those people are overwhelmingly white.

    That said, you never know, maybe a new bird flu epidemic will hit white folks hardest.

  8. 8.

    Kimmitt

    November 11, 2005 at 2:12 pm

    Jon H — yes, there are; for example, osteoporosis.

    Plus of course melanoma, which is a bit more serious than sunburn.

  9. 9.

    gswift

    November 11, 2005 at 9:15 pm

    Prescriptions tailored to genetic profiles is the wave of the future, and it doensn’t really have anything to do with race. Some of those genetic differences will be more common along racial lines. Sickle cell, for example, persists among equatorial populations because of malaria.

    Caucasians don’t get off scott free, we have much higher rates of cystic fibrosis, among other things.

    But there are lots of variations in individual biochemistry that affect what kinds of medication work best for that individual. Look at how many types of anti depressants for example. As it is now there’s a lot of trial and error with the doctor and patient involved in selecting the best medication. Soon we’ll be selecting the medication based on a genetic profile.

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