June 13, 2005

Zoe Werner banks online, shops online, talks to friends online. So when she received an e-mail message asking for a contribution to Gifford Miller's New York City mayoral campaign, she could not be bothered to write a check. Instead, Ms. Werner, a 26-year-old legal recruiter in Manhattan, did what a growing number of mostly new contributors are doing: She reached for her Visa card and went online to make a donation.

The fog was thick on Pinehurst No. 2 at the United States Open six years ago in North Carolina, and Payne Stewart was dressed for the occasion. He wore red, white and blue, with plus-fours, a tam-o'-shanter and a rain jacket with the sleeves cut out so as not to restrict his golf swing. Stewart's swing was one of the more envied on the PGA Tour, a slow, syrupy motion that he often made while chewing gum. It was a confident presentation.

Gustavo Duran and his best friend, Carlos Del Rosario, and the other five seniors on the George Washington High School baseball team in Washington Heights had been talking about the prom for weeks: the cool tuxedos they would wear, the limousine they would rent, the gorgeous girls they would dance with. With Santiago Molina, the smoothest dancer on the team, leading them, they practiced their salsa and merengue in their dingy locker room, twirling each other around the concrete floor between the rows of battered lockers.

Food and Drug Administration panel will consider whether heart failure treatment called BiDil should become first drug intended for one racial group, in this case, African-Americans; drug's maker NitroMed Inc claims its decision to test and market BiDil as drug for African-Americans is based on solid science; many scientists say race is too broad and ill-defined a category to be relevant in determining drug's approval, and critics accuse NitroMed of artfully managing regulatory system and patent law, as well as historical inequities in medical treatment for African-Americans, to drive its product to market; drug raises questions about how marketing, regulatory and political considerations play role in new drug development; FDA rejected BiDil in 1997, saying studies supporting it were inconclusive; BiDil's later study involved African-American heart failure patients only; cardiologist Dr Joshua Hare, who supports approval of BiDil, says contention that it works better in blacks than others remains untested hypothesis, because NitroMed did not do broader studies; photo (M)

Jon Pareles reviews Bonnaroo Festival, jam band festival in Manchester, Tenn; photos (M)