Mistrust limits minority representation in U.S. biomedical research.

2004 MAR 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Medical peer reviews are increasingly highlighting the inadequacy of minority representation in biomedical research, according to research from Frost & Sullivan.

Ethnic minorities - African Americans in particular - seem hesitant to participate in clinical trials for fear of becoming unsuspecting test subjects for experimental drugs.

The absence or underrepresentation of such a significant racial group can be detrimental to research. Studying racial and ethnic health disparities might, for example, help unravel the role of genetics in diseases such as cancers.

Another cause for national concern is that many minorities are hesitant to seek even routine preventative medical care, creating poor health status indicators of minority populations, which form a considerable portion of the American populace.

Recruitment for trials has been low in spite of the 1994 National Institutes of Health directive that makes the inclusion of minority groups and women mandatory in the patient populations of all agency-sponsored trials.

A primary reason could be the indelible memory of the U.S. government-sponsored Tuskegee Study that led to the death of 128 African Americans between 1932-1972.

The 40-year long experiment misled as many as 400 black men into believing they were being treated for latent syphilis while researchers were, in fact, withholding treatment to study the natural progression of the disease.