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 Arthur Lazarus, MedPage Today | 01.23.2026
A growing body of contemporary research and reporting exposes how old ideas can find new life when repurposed within modern systems of medicine, technology, and public policy. Over the last decade, several trends have converged:
- The rise of polygenic scoring...
By Evelina Johansson Wilén, Jacobin | 01.18.2026
In her book The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson describes pregnancy as an experience marked by a peculiar duality. On the one hand, it is deeply transformative, bodily alien, sometimes almost incomprehensible to the person undergoing it. On the other hand...
By Daphne O. Martschenko and Julia E. H. Brown, Hastings Bioethics Forum | 01.14.2026
There is growing concern that falling fertility rates will lead to economic and demographic catastrophe. The social and political movement known as pronatalism looks to combat depopulation by encouraging people to have as many children as possible. But not just...
By Michael Rossi, The Los Angeles Review of Books | 01.11.2026
This is the 10th installment in the Legacies of Eugenics series, which features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring the history of eugenics and the ways it shapes our present. The series is organized by Osagie K. Obasogie in...
