Only two TV shows are on the top ten lists for both White viewers and African American viewer. The two shows are 60 Minutes and Monday Night Football. Below are the two lists for the week of October 25th to October 31st.

It's back to number one in the Nielsen black viewer primetime ratings for the UPN comedy, "Half and Half"' (left) Thanks to a segment highlighting the Emmett Till murder case, CBS' "60 Minutes" Sunday attracted 2.3 million black viewers. This helped push the show back into the top ten with the general audiences, and into seventh place with black households.

Rank	African American Viewers	White Viewers
1	Half And Half UPN	CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS
2	Girlfriends UPN	World Series, Game 4: St. Louis vs. Boston, Fox
3	One On One UPN	World Series, Game 3: St. Louis vs. Boston, Fox
4	Second Time Around UPN	Desperate Housewives, ABC
5	NFL Monday Night Football ABC	Without a Trace, CBS
6	Eve UPN	CSI: Miami, CBS
7	60 Minutes CBS	60 Minutes, CBS
8	All Of Us UPN	Survivor: Vanuatu, CBS
9	America's Next Top Model 3 UPN	Two and a Half Men, CBS
9	Kevin Hill UPN	NFL Monday Night Football: Denver vs. Cincinnati, ABC
9	Cold Case CBS

MY TAKE ON THE ELECTION

As the lead product for NitroMed, BiDil, is an orally-administered nitric oxide-enhancing medicine that is being investigated for its potential to reduce mortality and hospitalization and improve the quality of life of African Americans diagnosed with heart failure. BiDil is a combination of two drugs, isosorbide dinitrate and hydralzine. Isosorbide dinitrate is a nitric oxide donor. Hydralzine is an antioxidant and vasodilator agent, which means it dilates blood vessels and protects the nitric oxide formed by isosorbide dinitrate from deactivating. Through these properties, BiDil is intended to provide a number of beneficial effects for African-American heart failure patients, including increasing levels of nitric oxide in the body. Because heart failure is a chronic disease, if approved, BiDil, like other medicines taken for chronic heart disease, will be taken for the duration of the patient's life.

African Americans and Heart Failure

Heart failure-or end-stage cardiovascular disease-affects approximately five million Americans. There is no cure for this disease and more than 50% of patients die within five years of diagnosis. African Americans suffer a disproportionate incidence of cardiovascular disease. With respect to heart failure, they are affected at a rate almost twice the rate of the corresponding white population and are more likely to die from it. This dramatic ethnic difference in health outcomes has been attributed to a variety of factors, including access to medical care, management of heart failure and socioeconomic factors. Recent analyses of heart failure clinical trials, however, show that the mortality rate and the hospitalization rate for African Americans is significantly higher than for non-African Americans, even after adjustment for such factors. Based on data from the United States census bureau and the Centers for Disease Control, we estimate that 750,000 African Americans have been diagnosed with heart failure, and we expect this number to grow to approximately 900,000 persons by 2010. African Americans may also be more vulnerable to heart failure because some medicines approved for use in heart failure appear in certain clinical studies to be less effective in African-American patients. These ethnic differences are documented in FDA-required product package inserts. While BiDil may be of benefit to the general heart failure population, several factors lead us to believe BiDil has the potential to be particularly successful in African-American heart failure patients. Specifically:
1.  African-American heart failure patients are disproportionately over-represented in the North American heart failure population

2.  existing therapies for heart failure may not work as effectively in African Americans

3.  BiDil's mechanism of action is intended to address the nitric oxide deficiency we believe to be associated with heart failure in African Americans; and

4.  a retrospective analysis of a completed heart failure study in the general population using the components of BiDil suggests that BiDil's components may have efficacy in African-American patients.

Confirmatory Clinical Study

We amended BiDil's previously submitted new drug application, which had been filed by a prior sponsor of the drug who was investigating BiDil for use in the general heart failure population. In early 2001, we received a letter from the FDA stating that, in addition to the data already submitted to the Agency, a clearly positive confirmatory trial in African Americans with heart failure would, together with the satisfaction of other conditions, including the FDA's approval of our manufacturing processes and marketing materials, provide a basis for approval of BiDil. In May 2001, we commenced our phase III confirmatory trial for BiDil, the African American Heart Failure Trial (A-Heft).
A-Heft enrolled more than 1,000 patients with moderate to severe heart failure who identified themselves as being African American. As is generally true with most phase III trials, the protocol was developed and finalized with significant input from the FDA. It was a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, meaning that neither the patients nor the investigators in the study were informed during the trial which patients were receiving BiDil and which were receiving a placebo, which is a pill that looks the same as the drug but has no active ingredients. On July 19, 2004, NitroMed announced that the phase III clinical trial of BiDil had been stopped early because of the significant survival benefit seen with the drug. The action followed the unanimous recommendations of both the independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) and the Steering Committee for the trial. When the trial was stopped, approximately 1,050 patients at about 170 study sites had been enrolled. We expect the data from the trial will be available in the fourth quarter of 2004.

Are we moving into a new era of race-based therapeutics? The publication, in this issue of the Journal,of the African-American Heart Failure Trial (A-Heft) (pages 2049–2057), a clinical trial of a medication intended for a single racial group, poses this awkward question. The study’s most striking finding — that the addition of isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine to conventional therapy for heart failure reduced relative one-year mortality by 43 percent among blacks — will provoke wide discussion. The trial’s sponsor, NitroMed, which holds a patent on the fixed-dose combination of isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine that was used, posits that heart failure has a different pathophysiology in blacks than in whites, necessitating different treatment strategies.

The reported 43 percent relative decrease in the rate of death due to heart failure among blacks is cause for celebration. There is wide agreement that blacks die from heart failure at rates disproportionate to those among whites. But to assess the study's larger implications for the role of race in therapeutic design, it is important to be clear about what the study has not shown. First, it has not established that adding isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine to conventional therapy for heart failure yields greater benefits for blacks than for other racial or ethnic groups. The study, which enrolled only self-identified blacks, did not test this hypothesis. The clinical and economic logic behind the design has its roots in previous, multiracial studies that compared isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine with other investigational drugs, administered in combination with different conventional therapies. These therapies were standard in their day but are inferior to the conventional therapy used today, which typically includes an angiotensin converting–enzyme (ACE) inhibitor. Indeed, one of these previous studies helped to establish ACE inhibitors as standard treatment. This trial compared isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine with the ACE inhibitor enalapril and demonstrated that enalapril resulted in a greater overall reduction in mortality.
Race consciousness offered a faster way through the FDA’s regulatory maze. In 1999, NitroMed obtained intellectual-property rights to fixed-dose isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine and said it would seek FDA approval to market the formulation as a therapy for heart failure in blacks. Two years later, the FDA indicated to NitroMed that successful completion of a clinical trial in black patients with heart failure would probably result in approval. This commitment gave rise to the African American Heart Failure Trial (A-Heft ), and the publication of this trial’s results virtually ensures FDA approval. NitroMed’s race-specific strategy promises another large business benefit. Two years ago, NitroMed obtained a second patent, this one based on the use of the formulation in blacks. This patent, the first ever granted to a preexisting drug for a new, race-specific use, pushes back potential market entry by generic sellers of the fixed-dose combination from 2007 to 2020. Less than a month later, NitroMed went public, raising $66 million (even though isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine are available separately in generic formulations, making it possible to closely approximate NitroMed’s combination at a cost of about 44 cents per dose). Thus, the emergence of the combination treatment as a race-specific drug was driven in large measure by regulatory and market incentives. It remains unknown whether these two drugs in combination with an ACE inhibitor improve survival among patients with heart failure in general (or among patients in other racial groups) beyond the improvement achieved by ACE inhibition alone. But a treatment for all patients with heart failure, regardless of race, could not have extended NitroMed’s intellectual property protection by 13 years.
A-Heft illustrates, market and regulatory incentives shape research agendas. The ease with which race can be used as a crude marker for clinically relevant biologic difference makes it attractive as a basis for bringing pharmaceutical products to market.

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NAACP ANNUAL FREEDOM FUND BANQUET

"A Platform For Change"

Nov. 20, 2004

Ypsilanti Marriott
6:00 PM

Speaker: John Johnson
National Chief Program Officer

Tickets are available at the NAACP Office
103 West Michigan Ave.
Ypsilanti, MI 48198
(734) 480-9654

Office hours;

Tues. 10:00 am - 3:00 pm
Weds. 12 Noon - 4:00 PM
Thurs. 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM
or call
734) 461-9727 or (734) 484-3716

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All Ads are due by the 12th.

Financial aid:
Beginning 2005, parents in families with incomes of less than $40,000 will no longer be expected to contribute to the cost of attending Harvard for their children. In addition, Harvard will reduce the contributions expected of families with incomes between $40,000 and $60,000.

Recruiting:
The College is intensifying its efforts to reach out to talented students across the nation who might not think of Harvard as an option to make sure that they understand Harvard's long-standing commitment to enrolling students from a wide range of backgrounds and regardless of financial circumstances.

Admissions:
Harvard is reemphasizing, in the context of its highly personalized admissions process, the policy of taking note of applicants who have remarkable accomplishments despite limited resources at home or in their local schools and communities.

For More information go to
http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/

Raena White, Ashley White, Laban King, Alexis Sims,

Jihan Woods, Alex Ubokudom, Diviin Huff, Mary Patillo,

Tony Smith, Lamar Davidson, Jillian Walker,

Jamie Flaherty, Stephanie Brown

DREAMGIRLS is the glittery story of Motown-era girl group, The Dreams, who skyrocket from singing backup to superstardom, but not without being torn apart by ambition, greed, frayed friendships and disillusionment. R & B, soul and gospel music combine for showstopper after showstopper. The musical originally opened on Broadway in 1981, won 6 Tony Awards and ran for 1,521 performances.

November 19th - November 21st
at the
University of Michigan’s
Power Center

Tickets are $8 for UM Student

$13 for Non-UM Student
TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW AT MUTO AND POWER CENTER TICKET OFFICE !!!
Please come out and support this ALL BLACK CAST play.