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CNN Live At Daybreak

Should Doctors Consider Skin Color When Prescribing Drugs?

Aired May 03, 2001 - 08:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: Now to the health of adults and a bit of a controversial story here. Should your doctor consider the color of your skin when prescribing drugs? Or is it medical racial profiling?

As CNN's medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen reports, two major studies raise questions about race and medications.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Should African-Americans and white people be given the same drugs in the same dosage for the same medical problems? Dr. Lonnie Fuller and his colleagues at the Morehouse School of Medicine say perhaps not. They say they've discovered genetic differences that make white people and African-Americans metabolize drugs differently.

DR. LONNIE FULLER, MOREHOUSE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: About 40 percent of African-Americans would probably fit into the slow- metabolizer group, and maybe 20 percent of Caucasians would fit into that group.

COHEN: With slow-metabolizers, drugs stay in the body for an unusually long time, meaning that a regular dose could actually become an overdose. Dr. Fuller says physicians should keep this in mind when prescribing drugs to African-Americans.

FULLER: We say: Start low and go slow.

COHEN: Two studies in "The New England Journal Of Medicine" take a look at this issue of race and drug metabolism. One found that a heart drug worked better on whites than on blacks. Another found that a different heart drug worked the same in both groups.

(on camera): Studies like these have people asking: Should scientists be doing studies based on race? An author of an editorial in the journal says race is a social distinction, not a biological one.

(voice-over): Georgia Dunston, a microbiologist and director of the New National Human Genome Center at Howard University, agrees. She says Dr. Fuller's study, is -- in her words -- "a bankrupt kind of mental paradigm." GEORGIA DUNSTON, HOWARD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: When we look at DNA, there is no way that you can group, organize, sort genes in such a way that you've got some collection of genes that would correspond to the racial groups that we use.

COHEN: She says the human genome project found there's very little genetic variation between racial groups.

DUNSTON: Genetics show us that humankind is essentially one large family.

COHEN: But Dr. Fuller says, since people tend to marry within their own ethnic group, certain genetic diseases, such as sickle cell anemia, are more common in one group than another. So he says it's legitimate to make racial distinctions in medicine, as long as they're meant to help people and not prove that one group is inferior or superior to another.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COHEN: Dr. Fuller and others are continuing to look for genes that might be different between blacks and whites. And, in fact, he says the National Institutes of Health is enthusiastic about such research since, to a large extent, minorities have traditionally not been included in medical studies.

MCEDWARDS: That's interesting, Elizabeth, because I thought the whole debate had moved away from talking about people as parts of different races, but rather talking about people as one race.

COHEN: Exactly. It's a very -- it's a very difficult argument to understand. But I'll try to give an example that might help explain it.

What the -- what the researchers are trying to say is that it's not a difference between races, per se; it's a difference between groups that tend to intermarry. For example, you might see a biological difference between, say, people from Iceland and people from Italy. They're of the same race, but each of those groups has tended to intermarry. So certain genes and certain genetic mutations become more common -- again, same race, but different genetic pools.

MCEDWARDS: Understood.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen, thanks very much.

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