Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century

BiDil was the first drug authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be marketed exclusively to African Americans. The provenance of this authorization demonstrates how race has been biologized in science and also within the FDA’s approval process. While BiDil initially was tested on a racial range of patients, it was later re-tested exclusively on African Americans. This adjusted testing took place precisely so that the drug could receive funding and FDA authorization as a drug targeted for African Americans.

Yet the racially targeted nature of the FDA’s approval was not based in biology: African Americans are not a biological race. Rather, the second round of clinical trials done on exclusively Black patients was designed so that the argument for race-based marketing could be achieved; it was an effort to overcome a previous failed attempt to secure FDA approval for all races.

Roberts argues that BiDil, which is effective for all humans, would have been approved for panoramic marketing if the second study had included only white people. The FDA, however, was reluctant to expand outward from Black people to all humanity in its authorization. Most clinical trials have been predominantly white, with the FDA assuming extrapolation. Roberts concludes that white people are seen as representative of humanity, while Black people only represent themselves in the sciences and, specifically, in this FDA hearing.

More broadly, the securing of FDA approval for BiDil demonstrates the ways that science joins forces with business and politics in securing funding, patents, and necessary governmental approval. This collusion further highlights the theme of The Dangerous Authority of Science, as it emphasizes that science is not conducted in an objective vacuum.

The Human Genome Project was the first effort at mapping and sequencing all the genes of the human genome. The project considered both the physical and functional nature of DNA in this mapping and sequencing. Though it was declared complete in 2003, at that time, it only included 92% of the genome. The final assembly of the genome, with 100% completion, was not accomplished until 2022.

When the Human Genome Project was announced, the genome was declared to be 99.9% shared among humans, with approximately 0.1% of difference. This difference was quickly theorized and described as racial, thus “resuscitating,” through cutting-edge science, an old way of thinking about human differences that is dangerous and has been used to naturalize human slavery.

The Human Genome Project has increased interest in the study of genetics, both professional and public. With this sequencing of the human genome came an array of direct-to-order genetic ancestry testing and increased scientific attention to personalized medicine, in which one’s genetics are explored so that propensities to disease are identified.

Roberts’s concern with this exploding interest in genetics, both professional and public, is that it turns people into themselves. Furthermore, in the case of personalized medicine, this interest presents patients as individuals determined by their biology, which is often racialized. Instead, Roberts calls for more scientific efforts toward identifying and improving environmental conditions, which are the main drivers of disease.