Discrimnation in medical care based on color and race - Research Paper Example

The first focuses on potential lack of general applicability of findings based on unrepresentative data gathered from race-biased samples, a concern which gains most of its force from implicitly or explicitly biological understandings of race. Of more concern to professionals who do not share that view, are the implications of racial disparity in clinical trials for the health of African-American patients (Mwaria, King); that Black patients are less likely to participate in research protocols makes them less likely to be among those first receiving the most advanced forms of medical intervention, and may contribute to general health inequality.

In the 1990’s clinicians and researchers, backed by the Centers for Disease Control (Trubo 1994), The National Institutes of Health (NIH 1994) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA 1997), began to hunt for the “barriers” to African-American participation in clinical trials. Research concluded that the problem is complex and that patient beliefs, racist bias on the part of physicians and institutional and community constraints all play a role (King, Mwaria, Shavers-Hornaday, 1997). Despite the apparent complexity of the issue, much of this discussion centers primarily on African-American “distrust” of doctors and the healthcare system in general and clinical trials in particular(Corbie-Smith 1999, Dula, Friemuth 2001, Gamble, Shavers-Hornaday, , Thomas 1999, ), while a substantial number of papers argued that widespread credulity toward “conspiracy theories” among Black patients is a key component of their distrust and thus of their unwillingness to undergo experimental treatments.

(Corbie-Smith , Friemuth, Simmons and Parsons, 1999, Thomas) Among the most outlandish—and well-analyzed—medical “conspiracy theories” are those concerning HIV/AIDS. Researchers have