Lack Of Diversity In Clinical Trials Presents Possible Health Consequences
By Rae Ellen Bichell,
National Public Radio
| 12. 17. 2015
Untitled Document
Despite striking ethnic disparities in the incidence and mortality of diseases like cancer and respiratory disease, minorities are not well represented in clinical trials. A paper out in the journal PLOS Medicine says two main barriers to achieving diverse clinical trials are the expense of recruiting minority subjects, and fears of exploitation in medical research.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
About 40 percent of Americans belong to a racial or ethnic minority. But the people who participate in clinical trials are much more homogeneous. These trials are the studies that test whether drugs work and inform doctors' decisions about how to treat their patients. As NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell reports, that mismatch can have big health consequences.
RAE ELLEN BICHELL, BYLINE: Here's the gist of an article this week in the journal PLOS Medicine - clinical trials in biomedical research are too white.
SAM OH: Yeesh (laughter) it's a little jarring to hear it that way.
BICHELL: But that's the reality. Sam Oh is an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco. He was one of a group of 14 researchers who...
Related Articles
By Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times | 08.13.2026
Immigrants at Ellis Island undergoing a medical inspection | Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
In 1924, Congress sent a message to the world: We are no longer ready to take “your tired, your poor, your huddled...
What We Inherit by Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko; and Original Sin by Kathryn Paige Harden have a great deal in common, with substantial differences in style and emphasis. Both books attempt, in different ways, to show the reader just where current research into human genomics stands, where that might be going, and why the authors are interested. In short, the influence of genomic research on our societies is already large and seems likely to change them in ways...
By Dan Falk, Nautilus | 08.20.2026
The pseudoscience of eugenics, founded on the mistaken notion that nature envisions some “right” combination of genes, and that selective breeding can improve the human race, is making a comeback. While the heyday of eugenics was a century ago, the...
By Dhruv Mehrotra , Wired | 08.03.2026
On March 13, 2025, Hugo Moreno-Mendez arrived at the McLennan County Probation Department in Waco, Texas, expecting a routine probation check-in. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were waiting to arrest him.
According to a criminal complaint reviewed by WIRED...
