Three The Hard Way

Not sure how many of you saw Three The Hard Way. It came out before I was born, way back in 1974. The movie is about a white supremicist group who plans to taint the water supplies in three predominately Black cities. The plan is to put something in the water supply that will only cause harm to Blacks. The plot is discovered and three Black men are sent to foil the plans. In the end they do. Put it on your Netflix list. This would be a good movie night flick for the friends to watch.

Is the plot that far-fetched? Is it possible to develop a drug that has different results for Blacks than whites?? That plot is not unreal at all. In fact, just recently the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved BiDil (bye-DILL), a drug for the treatment of heart failure in self-identified black patients. For me, this is a huge step in the right direction. Who knows. Maybe we could make some progress toward cures for Sickle Cell and that other thing that affects the Joos.

At the same time, I’m fearful that, in the hands of the wrong people, this type of science could be used to cause more harm than good. What if we had stuff to kill Iraqi people but leave our soldiers unharmed? Would we use it?? What if we had a drug that killed drug addicts but left those not addicted unaffected? Would we use it to rid our streets of drug addicts and the crimes they bring?

It’s the new millinium. Nobody would think of using science to promote racist values. I mean, we’re a civilized people. And, and, this is Amerikkka. However, this is the same Amerikkka that allowed the Tuskegee experiments. And I bet people thought that couldn’t/wouldn’t happen even back then. But it did. I believe it still could. I want to believe that only good can come from race specific science. I want to believe that our desire to succeed as a nation will out-weight a few folks’ desire to cause harm.

What do you guys think?? Does the good that these drugs cause out-weigh whatever bad may come?? Is it really worth the effort to develop race specific drugs?? How about if it’s not developed with one race in mind but later found to be more useful to one race??