Premium
Race, Medicine, and Social Justice: Pharmacogenetics, Diversity, and the Case of BiDil
Author(s) -
Jordan Sara R.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
review of policy research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1541-1338
pISSN - 1541-132X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1541-1338.2008.00309.x
Subject(s) - pharmacogenomics , economic justice , race (biology) , pharmacogenetics , intervention (counseling) , health care , diversity (politics) , public health , social justice , population , public economics , sociology , political science , medicine , economics , law and economics , law , biology , pharmacology , genetics , environmental health , psychiatry , gender studies , gene , nursing , genotype
In this article, I probe an example of high‐technology medicine as a case study in the problems of the regulation of advancing technology. Specifically, I address the implications of pharmacogenomics—an emerging form of population‐based health care intervention—for public policies designed to eliminate racial disparities in health. Using the case of BiDil, a historical precursor to pharmacogenetic technology, I offer a framework for further studies of high‐technology medicine in which policy analysis is part of a social review based on the justice standard of ex ante mutual advantage. It is the contention in this article that the most just and reasonable deployment of pharmacogenomics is as a compensatory tool to alleviate health disparities.