FDA approves first "ethnic" drug

I've been following this for a while ... it's hard to find the real data to support the claim of the ethnic/racial bias the drug has. So I'm inclined to go with the latter angle.

Didn't Daryl Gates use a really specious line of defense about African-American anatomical differences when justifying the use of the chokeholds the LAPD instituted in the '80s?

I'd lean toward marketing too, but when the "critics" here cited are claiming there are "no biological differences" between racial groups, I kinda wonder.

[For the record big differences between (a) bullshit about anatomical differences large enough to make a difference in chokeholding and (b) minor genetic tendencies that might make tiny differences in the effects of drugs; cf variations in the incidence and effect of certain diseases between races.]

"Black people die disproportionately
under the chokehold because their arteries are not normal." - Gates

(fair 'nuff, nabisco.)

I'm less inclined to think of it as marketing because the original clinical trial was with a multi-racial population and the significant effect on African-Americans was only discovered through a reanalysis of those results, prompting the second clinical trial. Maybe marketing played a role in deciding to end the second clinical trial early. But the results seem overwhelmingly positive, so maybe the same decision (not necessarily a good one) would have been made even if race had not been a factor, e.g., if the results had been for the multi-racial population in the original clinical trial.

Do scientists think of genetic differences in statistical terms? I'm fairly certain that it has long been established that genetic differences among races are not significant, and I'm assuming their looking at statistical variation. I wonder if there could be circumstantial reasons for the effectiveness of the drug among African-Americans, rather than genetic ones.

The perception of difference among races based upon physical appearance may not be that significant in biological terms.

I think very few are meaningful at all. It's just that the fact that this drug is for heart disease was kind of immediately reminiscent of the few major examples, like the variations in red blood cell enzymes.