May 4, 2011
“The cutting edge of technology is the bleeding edge of technology…”
There are inequities in who participates in medical research. Medical research thus contributes to disparities in who benefits from the research. Efforts to communicate to recruit participants to medical research are far-reaching–going beyond who participates to who fits the profile of a patient likely to benefit from research–based on who participated in the research.
We who participate in medical research are pioneers in the medical frontier. Whether we realize we are pioneers or what that means to any one of us varies. Our participation or lack thereof, creates disparities both in terms of who is participating in medical research and then in terms of who has access to the therapies linked to medical research. These are related and it’s hard to say where one starts and the other begins…
If research is being conducted with educated, well-nourished participants, it will be difficult to say that what is learned can be adopted by or applied to less educated, poorly nourished participants. And this example can be extended to a host of other situations where the research is conducted with one group and the findings are not used to benefit other groups because there is genuine concern that they may not apply to them.
