With the advent of personalized medicine and purported "race-based therapies" such as BilDil in the news, it is time the pharmaceutical industry makes a more concerted effort to engage racial and ethnic minority groups and the rural poor in clinical research.
Informed consent takes place in the brain. While that seems obvious, the implications of that statement go much deeper. To a great extent, both bioethics and federal policy are based on 17th century assumptions by philosophers such as Descartes-who knew nothing of the structure and function of the brain.
In the biomedical research industry, and at Pfizer in particular, we are committed to what we call "The Three As"-making medicines available, accessible, and affordable.
We work so hard to recruit subjects for clinical trials, so why don't we try harder to retain them?