Clinical trials are a bit of an oddity. In such a civilized and advanced culture as ours, it seems out of place to have an entire industry revolving around the mistreatment of volunteers. People are paid (usually miniscule amounts of money, by the way) to be injected with random crap by doctors who assume no liability for what happens to them as a result. Let's say you start having uncontrollable bowel movements after a trial. Now let's say that they never stop. In either case, you won't be helped in any way by the people who gave you the drug. You knew what you were signing up for, basically.
With all of this horribleness on the surface, I have to imagine that there are even worse things underneath. Call me paranoid, but it seems to me that any time there is a public perception of something (no matter how awful the public perception is) there is always a darker underbelly. After the break is a handful of articles about people who died doing clinical trials.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/pharma-majors-under-fire-over-trial-compensation/434534/
http://classic.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54825/
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2007/08/12/28719.aspx
http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/05/clinical-trial-deaths-and-compensation-in-india/
clinical trials...cant live with them, cant live without.
ReplyDeleteI just wish that it were a more tightly regulated system. It's pretty obviously a way to get poorer people to stand in line for potentially hazardous tests with no liability.
ReplyDeleteVery cool post. I especially agree with you when you mention how things are always darker than the public's perception. So very true.
ReplyDeleteYou mention that people get very little money to do it. So the only people that would find that as incentive would be those poor enough that a little money is a lot, or the people that need the potential drug being tested. Meaning most of the people on clinical trials are 1) the sick, and 2) the poor. Just one of the many ways we offload pollution of various sorts onto the "less desirable". (not saying I agree with it, just stating point of fact)
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree. I think that it is an inevitable side effect of American capitalism, a system that thrives on the survival of the fittest mentality. It's inevitable in a pure capitalist system but when you add those delicious bits of socialism (welfare, social security) that people seem to get so very angry about these days, you can circumvent a lot of the effect.
DeleteIt's an odd dichotomy because we need trials to advance medicine but at the same time it definitely does seem to prey on the weak. Perhaps with better benefits (like, say, medical care for potentially deadly side effects) it wouldn't be such a harsh system.