The fully explored answer to that is an article (or book) in and of itself, I can't cover every single outcome but highlight some prominent ones in a 2000 word article.
I 100% disagree with everything you say here. For one, that is not a PR disaster as the headline you're using is one no one would ever use as it is insensitive. In fact what would happen is "New cancer treatment found to be more effective for minorities than previous treatments being test" would be a fabulous headline that would garner tons of support.
Saying "steer clear of minorities" shows complete "superiority" complex and is indicative of why the problem exists.
Well you’d have to do basic research, come up with a hypothesis, then run a clinical trial to test that hypothesis. And hopefully find useful information although clinical trials do fail.
There is actually a push here (ignoring mandated public funded trials) because the Minority populations are becoming large enough that if a diabetes drug that was better in black people existed there’s a massive underserved customer base. Follow the money...
That only happens for certain drugs, typically treatment naive diabetes, IBD and other chronic disease patients where in the US there’s a standard treatment the patients receive right away so they have to go overseas to find untreated patients. That being said often those treatments will still have to come back to the US to run trials later on for approval on the population here.
Totally agree, "bucketing" is certainly hard, but to define every possible bucket would have me writing an entire book. This piece is meant to get the discussion started and open peoples eyes to the existing problem and consciously start to work on solutions. My African ancestry is all sub-saharan African (at least according to my 23andMe) so I'm quite familiar with those statistics you're providing.
I could write a whole other article on this as well. The pregnant women part actually fits extremely well in this context even more so, they aren't neglected, they are specifically left out because researchers don't want to have to explain their outliers. I'm a proponent of that, but the sponsors have to front the costs to make it happen, without a government mandate that gets very tricky.
That's 100% true, I'm not saying we have to create a new drug, but define what is the best treatments available, as well as take that into account when the treatments are being made. Especially as there become more black people if there is a treatment just for that minority it may be a quite profitable route for them.
Further down in the comments somewhere I posted another comment where it's as simple as certain chemo's cause toxicity levels in Asians where they don't in white Americans. So simply lowering the dosage would fix the problem but because that wasn't involved in the original research it wasn't known for quite sometime and Asian populations suffered.
When I say "focus on minorities for research" working any solution is fine, simple or not.
More minority volunteers, and having clinical trials where minorities go to for care. Great example is most of the well funded academic institutions that run research are in affluent, mostly white neighborhoods, so if a (for assumption) poor minority wanted to participate, its not likely that the clinical trial would be available near them.
* All Minorities, not one minority, and technically I believe all funded research should reflect the populations that exist rather than focusing on one, and take the various genetic backgrounds into account when developing treatments.
110% agree. The government has actually had a mandate out for publicly funded research since 1993, but only have enforcement rules been enacted and we have yet to see if they will be followed through on.
For research done by private institutions (Pharma, Biotech, etc.) there is no mandate and it's on the researcher to make it a thing.
It would mean that if a drug was inefficient on an African American of Zimbabwe descent, the same drug would be unlikely to be efficient on the black people Zimbabwe. There are measurable genetic traits these can be attributed to, although unfortunately they are less understood for minority populations.
Honestly I have no idea which would have a better outcome, but I know both would have a great impact. My assumption would be the second one if I had to pick though, for example as an African American I have a sickle-cell trait and thus I shouldn't have kids with someone who also has that trait, and African American's in general have a higher likelihood of that trait. This is fortunately one of the well understood minority cases and therefore I can take action on it, but for many other genetic/ethnic dispositions to harm, they are quite unknown.
If I ever figure out which would be better I'll let you know! Or if someone else chimes in.
Your assumption in #2 is incorrect. What actually happens often is the doctor doesn't know what to prescribe the patient and the patients quality of life suffers. As well as stated in my article, one of those alternative treatments "For another type of asthma treatment, long-acting bronchodilators, blacks are 4 times more likely than whites to die or experience serious complications when using them."