if you are black or hispanic in the united states, you are
two times more likely
to die of covid-19 than someone who is white or asian. in chicago alone, black people account for
72 per cent of deaths
from the virus. new york has seen
thousands of transit workers
fall ill, a labour pool where ethnic minorities make up
70 per cent
of the workforce.
why, then, are vaccine trials predominantly composed of “
white, college-educated women
,” who are least at risk of exposure and death?
“if you want a vaccine to be maximally effective and you test it on a totally different population, such as white, college-educated women, you’re making assumptions that any genetic differences don’t matter,” says
colin furness
, assistant professor at the dalla lana school of public health. “ideally, you want to test the same vaccine on the population you’re using it on. you want to be able to go to where there is more risk. if you’re testing on a population that’s much less likely to get exposed, you’re going to have the vaccine [based on] misleading results.”
part of the reason for the discrepancy in the racial representation of trial participants is cost.
furness says that while trial recruitment that accounts for different populations — called stratified random sampling — is more important than recruiting people who are simply “keen on being guinea pigs,” it also takes more time and money. a 2003 mayo clinic
study on minority recruitment
found that recruiting minority participants cost nearly five times more than recruiting white participants.
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