Law Commons^™

“Racially-Tailored” Medicine Unraveled, Sharona Hoffman

ExpressO

In June 2005, the FDA approved BiDil, a heart failure medication that is labeled for use only by African-Americans and thus, is the first treatment of its kind. The drug likely portends a future of growing interest in “race-based” medicine. This phenomenon is emerging at the same time that scientists, in light of the Human Genome Project, are reaching an understanding that “race” has no biological meaning, and consequently, “racially-tailored” medicine is both puzzling and troubling.

This Article explores the reasons for the new focus on “racial-profiling” in medicine. It analyzes the risks and dangers of this approach, including medical …

Tragedy & Remedy: Black Reparations For Racial Disparities In Health, Kevin Outterson

ExpressO

This Article makes unique and powerful contributions to Black reparations, health care law, biomedical and social science research into racial disparities in health, and critical race theory.

The starting point is the tragedy of Black health in America, with dramatically higher death rates and shorter life expectancies. Current research is ill-equipped to consider the deeper historical roots of Black health disparities; while the development of racially-specific therapies (such as the FDA’s approval in July 2005 of BiDil, a heart drug for Blacks) actually contributes to racial profiling in medicine. Biomedical research has a race problem.

The Black reparations movement suffers …

Race Against The Machine: An Argument For The Standardization Of Voting Technology, Jason Belmont Conn

ExpressO

In this article/note, I examine a lingering question from the court cases arising out of the 2000 election: Does Bush v. Gore and the relevant equal protection case law open the door for a legal challenge to a state’s use of different voting machines/technologies and how do racial disparities in machine error rates impact this analysis? In addition to reviewing the current literature and case law on voting machine standardization, I also present an unrecognized and undocumented connection between the “all deliberate speed” order in Brown and the Court’s discussion of voting technology in Bush v. Gore.