Race,Medicine, and Social Justice: Pharmacogenetics,Diversity, and the Case of BiDil

In this article, I probe an example of high‐technology medicine as a case study in the problems of the regulation of advancing technology. Specifically, I address the implications of pharmacogenomics—an emerging form of population‐based health care intervention—for public policies designed to eliminate racial disparities in health. Using the case of BiDil, a historical precursor to pharmacogenetic technology, I offer a framework for further studies of high‐technology medicine in which policy analysis is part of a social review based on the justice standard of ex ante mutual advantage. It is the contention in this article that the most just and reasonable deployment of pharmacogenomics is as a compensatory tool to alleviate health disparities.