[amilcarkabral]

I think it is useful to differentiate the medicines given to people. In the ancient and reviving traditions of African holistic health, Chinese medicine and Indian Auyerveda, an assessment of the whole being was taken into account when prescriptions (both medicinal and behavioral) were given by specialized elders.

In western medical science, there is a proclivity to create a 'one size fits all' drug that will work with millions of people due to the massive amount of research and paperwork it takes to create a drug that economically breaks even, and perhaps profitable.

It seems that the medical model is adjusting and taking account to what it calls 'counter-indicators' as a signal that every drug isn't for every patient. That's why you now in the news see sporadic reports of drugmakers wanting to create a process whereby they can create drugs based on someone's genetic code. Why? because they, again, are thinking one-to-one correlations between disease and cure. This, however will fail. Their efforts, though once in a while noble, will fail because of the great variation in phenotypic deveploment based on the living habits of the individual.

I do applaud them recognizing that as a whole, some genotypic and phenotypic groups respond to medicines and substances differently. For instance, we know that a lot more black folk are "lactards" or lactose intolerant . . . yet we still buy jenny craig and slim fast which are milk-based drinks when on diets, and eat cereal and icecream like it is going out of style.

There are two economic spurs for drug-makers to start lopping off and creating customized drugs for large segments of the population. The first is that they can successfully create drugs that are designed to have specific biochemical interactions based on common attributes in a group. Second, it is less likely that they will incur rightful and frivolous lawsuits based on the mild and extreme contra-indicators/side-effects of the drugs.

However, many of these will fail because they are trying to reduce and prescribe medicines on a purely bio-chemical scale. There is little to no analysis of the social, cultural, economic and psycho-somatic context in which these dis-eases arise. It is only when the communities (the af-am and medical) come to realize that there needs to be a cultural re-organization such that the living patterns that lead to diseases must be eliminated before these diseases are 'cured'.

What's the point of taking a sick fish out of polluted water, healing it, and putting it right back in the polluted water that causes the sickness?

But then again, the corporate part of the medical industry is more focused on selling drugs than creating a healthy population (white or black).