pro-DEI-requirements in clinical trials, so that drug companies have to have a certain number of various groups in their trial population
If this is motivated by accounting for biological diversity that might translate into different responses to a drug, then this feels like a very non-central case of DEI at best and I would expect it’s not what a majority of people think of when they hear/think “DEI”.
If you would want to account for biological diversity when doing drug trials you would require pre-existing conditions to be as prevalent in the population that you test in your drug trial. Saying that you have at least X percent obese people would likely give you more clinical knowledge than requiring at least X percent to be Native Americans.
Big Pharma generally selects participants to have less preexisting conditions and take less other medication than the general population. In the end FDA, requirements for drug legalization have positive advantages but also make drug trials and new drugs more expensive.
There are both arguments to be more for more FDA and for less FDA regulation. In this case, I think it’s worth noting that we have a Trump appointee defending some DEI regulatory requirements.
Yeah. Though as a counterpoint, something I picked up from IIRC Scott Alexander or Marginal Revolution is that the FDA is not great about accepting foreign clinical trials, or demands that they always be supplemented by trials of Americans, or similar.
I expect that’s about not trusting the foreigners who did the clinical trials (I have heard this)[1], and not so much about expecting that Americans are biologically different from foreigners.
Specifically, someone with some knowledge told me that the FDA knows that there are some countries where the trials are completely untrustworthy. And that there was a political decision where they said, “If we disallow trials from some countries but not others, there will be much complaining and we’ll probably be called racists”, and solved the issue by disallowing trials from all foreign countries.
If this is motivated by accounting for biological diversity that might translate into different responses to a drug, then this feels like a very non-central case of DEI at best and I would expect it’s not what a majority of people think of when they hear/think “DEI”.
If you would want to account for biological diversity when doing drug trials you would require pre-existing conditions to be as prevalent in the population that you test in your drug trial. Saying that you have at least X percent obese people would likely give you more clinical knowledge than requiring at least X percent to be Native Americans.
Big Pharma generally selects participants to have less preexisting conditions and take less other medication than the general population. In the end FDA, requirements for drug legalization have positive advantages but also make drug trials and new drugs more expensive.
There are both arguments to be more for more FDA and for less FDA regulation. In this case, I think it’s worth noting that we have a Trump appointee defending some DEI regulatory requirements.
Yeah. Though as a counterpoint, something I picked up from IIRC Scott Alexander or Marginal Revolution is that the FDA is not great about accepting foreign clinical trials, or demands that they always be supplemented by trials of Americans, or similar.
I expect that’s about not trusting the foreigners who did the clinical trials (I have heard this)[1], and not so much about expecting that Americans are biologically different from foreigners.
Specifically, someone with some knowledge told me that the FDA knows that there are some countries where the trials are completely untrustworthy. And that there was a political decision where they said, “If we disallow trials from some countries but not others, there will be much complaining and we’ll probably be called racists”, and solved the issue by disallowing trials from all foreign countries.