Racial disparities with 'informed consent'

The dearth of non-white representation in clinical trials has been abundantly clear for quite some time now. However, there’s one area in which African-Americans have disproportionately more of a presence in medical studies: when the trials don’t require informed consent.

Scientists are allowed by the FDA to conduct studies without obtaining consent when they test emergency medical procedures. In these studies, 29 percent of the people enrolled are African-American — more than double their representation in clinical trials overall, a new study points out. African-Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population overall.