TY - JOUR T1 - Postcards: race and medicine in the 21st century JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 716 LP - 717 VL - 54 IS - 506 AU - Richard Tutton Y1 - 2004/09/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/54/506/716.abstract N2 - On 20 July 2004, it was reported that BiDil®, a drug aimed specifically at African Americans to treat heart failure, has proven so successful in a clinical trial conducted in the US that it was ended early.1 The pharmaceutical company sponsoring the development of BiDil and the clinical trial to assess its efficacy, NitroMed Pharmaceuticals, hope that this will now lead the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve BiDil for prescription. BiDil could be the first of several ‘ethnically-tailored’ drugs to appear in the near future, with implications for the way drugs are prescribed by GPs and other clinicians.The case of BiDil appears at a time when there has been extensive debate in the pages of medical and scientific journals regarding the vexed issue of whether race has any place in 21st century medicine and science. Questions regularly debated concern whether race actually exists. Is it a matter of biology or merely a social phenomenon, or maybe a little of both? Is ethnicity a better, more accurate term to use than race? Should patients and research subjects be categorised according to their race/ethnicity? If so, for what purpose and who should define these categories — the patients or the clinicians ? Can the medical and scientific community agree on a set of common guidelines when using race or ethnicity to undertake and report on their research?This debate flows from two not entirely separate issues. The first concerns continuing inequalities in access to health care by minority groups and disparities in health outcomes among different sections in society.2 Few would argue with the need to ensure equity in health and health care, and the very pressing issues of racism have been recognised by past contributors to this journal.3 The other issue is the emphasis … ER -