Shah, Sonia - The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients

[oyceter]

I picked this up after reading sanguinity's write up and after becoming more aware of the subject after reading Conquest and Killing the Black Body, particularly the chapters about the forced sterilization of Native and Black women (and I am sure of other women of color) and the unethical means of getting those women to agree to Norplant or Depo-Provera

Comments

[londonkds]

when she first argues against siccing experimental drugs that may or may not hurt patients on test subjects, and then argues that a drug study was unethical because they did not provide experimental drugs they thought might or might not help

Have not read the book, but it may be a matter of Phase I versus Phase II studies. Phase I studies test drugs on healthy people to make sure that they are not so toxic as to make them unacceptably dangerous or unpleasant to use no matter how serious the condition they treat is. Phase II studies are then carried out on people with the target condition to see if the drugs actually work.

[oyceter]

That could very well be; I was definitely having a hard time keeping all the terminology and rules straight. I think I will have to reread the book after I have more background knowledge.

[puddingcat]

Sounds interesting. I work for a company involved in testing of new medicines on humans (although I'm not client- or trial subject-facing). How balanced an argument does she give overall? I find I can't read "BIG PHARMA ARE EVIL" books (or indeed, "BIG PHARMA DO NO WRONG" ones) because I get too irate at the lack of perspective.

[oyceter]

Hrm. The book definitely focuses on the bad side of testing new medicine. She does talk about ethics committees and balancing the need for testing with the need to not offshore that testing onto the people least able to protest, but I also don't think I know enough about the industry to say how balanced it is. She is definitely on the side of not-Big-Pharma though!

[redrose3125]

After all, if they're testing in Africa or India, those people couldn't access the best treatment anyway, so a placebo really is their best treatment. And it would be unethical to provide access to good drugs during the trial and then to take them away afterward.

It would seem to me to be most ethical to use the good stuff for the trial, and keep supplying it afterwards. I wonder how expensive that would be, compared to the marketing and advertising budgets of some of these companies...

[oyceter]

Yeah.. she noted that and then noted that very few companies would probably be willing to do so. Although there's also the fact that some of the drugs are being tested for chronic conditions, but some are definitely being tested for more one-off conditions. So even if the people in the area won't have access to the drugs afterward, at least the people in the trial will be helped.