The FDA removes pages on the diversity of clinical trials

An effort from the Trump administration to delete pages from the Food and Drug Administration website focused on diversity, equity and inclusion has attracted many pages aimed at ensuring that the clinical trials used to test medications And medical devices include people of different ethnic and economic origins.

The purge of the pages opens a window on the way in which the well -established opposition of President Trump and his collaborators to the Dei initiatives has considerable effects only after their entry into office. While many DEI initiatives focus on hiring practices and communications in a way that the administration disdained, efforts aimed at diversifying clinical trials have been largely considered important scientific, that is To say to test experimental products on various populations which would ultimately draw advantages or incur risks.

The removal of references to Dei’s problems seems to manifest itself on all government sites. Stat has identified web pages managed by key health agencies, including the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Infectious Allergies and Diseases, which previously included diversity and equity objectives in their mission declarations, But who don’t do it anymore. The National Institutes of Health have removed the pages of their research office on sexual and gender minorities and the scientific research group on the health of sexual minorities and NIH gender, as well as the home page of the research office on women’s health, sex and gender. The Trump administration even closed the page in the Spanish of the White House.

But cleaning the pages related to clinical trials is remarkable because of the way in which this could affect the way in which researchers, both within the government and outside, as well as businesses, test drugs and medical devices . Under the Biden Administration, the FDA had urged the industry to register more people of colored and women at the tests, and published in June 2024 a project of guidelines on the way of proceeding. It is not known whether these guidelines will one day be finalized, or if the removal of web pages means that the Trump administration intends to abandon its efforts to diversify clinical trials.

Scientists have focused on the issue of diversity in clinical studies, both because the absence of a diverse population can lead to skepticism on the part of patients who could be helped by drugs and because some drugs act differently depending on people of different origins.

The first trials of hypocholesterolic drugs were carried out mainly in men, which gave rise to years of controversy as to whether the treatments were also effective in women, where subsequent studies show that they reduce the crisis rates hearts and saved lives. There is a drug for the heart, hydralazine/isosorbid, which is only approved in African-Americans. Certain cancer drugs act on much more widespread genes in populations of Asian origin.