Jay Cohn, a cardiologist for more than 50 years, was fighting a losing battle against heart failure in the 1980s. Treatments of the day weren't working, and people were dying at a rate of 20 percent per year.
Nearly two decades later, the University of Minnesota Medical School professor was thrilled when BiDil, the drug he called "remarkably lifesaving," received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2005 to treat heart failure.
But the fanfare was short-lived; the drug flopped.
Much of its financial failure is because of controversy over its approval for use in black patients only.
Some retaliated, saying researchers had no basis to market the drug to a specific race. Cohn disagrees and says confusion surrounding the issue has crippled BiDil's ability to treat patients who need it.
"The ultimate prejudice is to not treat black people with heart failure with this drug," he said.
A tale of two compounds
Nitrate and Hydralazine - a combination that would form BiDil - was originally studied in 1980 on a group of 642 male veterans. The 186...
