They don’t want to take pills. They’re unwilling to participate in
randomized trials. They are reluctant to take a chance,” says Robert
Ratner, M.D., head of the Medlantic Clinical Research Center in
Washington, D.C., discussing why some people don’t want to participate
in medical research. “There remains reluctance to participate in any
medical study. Some of it is, `I want someone else to do it so I “know
it’s safe, then I’ll do it’ — the guinea-pig phenomenon.”
Historically, the level of participation of African Americans in
medical research studies has been modest. Wary of the motives of those
conducting the research — especially in light of the Tuskegee syphilis
experiment — Blacks have tended to shy away from men and women in lab
coats.
That may be changing however, and an example of that change is the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) diabetes study.
NIH is conducting the study — called the Diabetes Prevention
Program (DPP) — at twenty-five sites around the country. The purpose
of the study is to examine ways to prevent type 2 diabetes — a disease
which is developed over time in adults and which causes inadequate
processing of sugars in the body.
An important aspect of the study is the mandated participation of
minorities. Guidelines for institutions conducting the research state
that half of the participants are to be minorities. To accomplish that,
community fears about past research studies had to be assuaged.
“There is a reluctance to participate [in medical research studies]
in all ethnic groups,” says Ratner. “They have some very real concerns.
For instance: To what extent is the research explained?; Will it be
relevant to them?; And are the goals of the program acceptable? People
will not go into a study that they don’t understand or trust.”
Recalling the History
