Some Fear ‘Designer Drugs’ Will Lead to Racial Medicine, UA Historian Awarded MIT Fellowship to Study Connection

A UA expert on America’s racial history has been awarded a fellowship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to join scholars researching so-called “designer medicines” and the possibilities they could lead to racial medicine.

Dr. Gregory Dorr, assistant professor of history, won a $40,000 grant and joined a team of scholars at the Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Medicine and Technology within MIT’s Program in Science and Technology Studies. The multidisciplinary group is studying “pharmacogenetics” – the idea that genes control the way the body metabolizes pharmaceuticals, influencing the way drugs affect the body. Some fear efforts to formulate drugs to a person’s genetic make-up could lead to racial medicine, potentially inducing health insurers to refuse coverage to ethnic groups deemed to be medically at-risk because of their genes.

Full Story — 'Designer Drugs'