These are the new faces of clinical trials in poor and developing countries. For populations without healthcare living on less than two dollars a day, they have little opportunity to see doctors. Signed up for clinical trials by their parents, it is the only way to ensure they receive any care-especially if they are suffering from cancer or other types of treatable but expensive diseases. Children like these (as well as adults and the elderly) don’t have a choice. They have to be given treatment so they must accept whatever drug they have been put on. As recent events have shown, especially with the deaths of 46 babies undergoing one clinical trial in India, the patients do not always benefit from these “miracle drugs”.
“Imagine the uproar if dozens of drug-trial patients in America were to perish from deadly side effects known to the FDA. Consider the commotion if AIDS babies in Europe were to die while being administered placebos rather than potentially life-saving drugs. These scandals did happen—just elsewhere” In Sonia Shah’s book “The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients”, she reveals the true cost of outsourcing clinical trials to India, and other developing nations where the world’s poor are systematically taken advantage of.
The people partaking in these clinical trials do not have access to health care, and often can not read so they do not fully understand the consent they are giving. Adding to the questionable ethics of these drug trials is the fact that often times, the patients do not know they are participating in the trial. They will go to the clinic for one thing and get an extra shot or drug. When asked what it is, they are given vague answers. There is a reason these trials are being done in developing countries. Lax laws and limited to nonexistent enforcement coupled with desperate and vulnerable populations provide the perfect situation for pharmaceutical companies to finish their clinical trials quickly and for 50-60% cheaper than they could in the western world. Consider the largest global Type II Diabetes clinical trial. It is taking place in 20 countries including China, India, Malaysia and Eastern Europe- all areas with large populations of poor citizens.
