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Testing Drugs on India's Poor
theodp writes to tell us Wired is reporting that a lot of medical research firms are using India's poor as a hot test bed. From the article: "The sudden influx of drug companies to India resembles the gold rush frontier, according to Sean Philpott, managing editor of The American Journal of Bioethics. 'Not only are research costs low, but there is a skilled work force to conduct the trials'"
So now we are outsourcing the jobs of lab animals to India?? And I shudder to think what the "No Indian testing" label will be in Europe (maybe a big hand patting a meditating guru on the head?)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Drug and other critical medical research needs to be conducted and tested on live humans at some point. Some people are going to bite the bullet for humanity, why not India's poor? They are getting paid for it, a nice enough sum that it's worth their health and life. They aren't being forced or coerced into it.
Besides, these people don't have much use in society or a future, especially in India's caste society. This is an excellent opportunity for them to contribute something to better mankind and benefit the rest of us. We should be applauding and congratulating them for their sacrifice. We shouldn't try to take this away from them.
Some people will be angry with this, but if not them, then who's going to do this?
Good for them!
Bill and Melinda Gates should get in on this. America's own Tuskeegee experiements proved the scientific worth of experimenting on the poor. Cheers all around.
How can giving poor people money for taking medication that may be a little risky be a bad thing? Especially if their participation could eventually lead to better medication that saves lives....
"Doctors are easier to recruit for trials because they don't have to go through the same ethics procedures as their Western colleagues," Ecks said. "And patients ask fewer questions about what is going on."
I can't tell if he's being serious, but if he truly does have no moral qualms about that last statement, then he frightens me.
So first they took away our call centers... Then they took away our IT jobs... Now they're taking our priviledge to test dangerous drugs on the poor and destitute?
Damn you trained and abled Indian workforce!
I guess India's poor cost less to test on the the US bunny rabbit, I for one can not believe companies would take away jobs from som many bunnies I can't even imagine how bunnies can take care of their large families.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
cheers, ben
Never miss a good chance to shut up -- Will Rogers
FTA: "But in March, everything changed when India submitted to pressure from the World Trade Organization to stop the practice and implement rules that prohibit local companies from creating generic versions of patented drugs."
WHy do they want to prevent that? What about in the U.S. where we have things like Walgreen's Wal-tussin to compete with Robitussin (same ingredients, cheaper cost for the consumer)? (same with Sudafed, etc.) Does this fall under the kind of thing WTO wants to stop?
Forst Pist !!!! eat it dorks!!!!!11!!1!!!11!!1!1!11!
after all, here in the USA, we've been doing this to our people for many many years. and not only with medication. food, drink, etc.
The Miracle of Birth, Part 2: The Third World
Mom: Come on, now. Out you go. Now, uh, Dalip, Bhim, Harinder, Ajit, Indra, Mandeep, it is being past your bedtime.
Kids: Oh, mother!
Mom: Now, not to be arguing! Lakshmi, Sita, Gita, Surinder...
Dad: Wait! I have something to be telling whole family.
Mom: Oh, quick - please to be going and getting the others in, Pradeep.
Kids: What could it be being?
Dad: The call center is closed! There is to be no more work. We are now to live among the untouchable.
Kids: [whispering among themselves]
Dad: Come in my little loves, I am having no option but to be selling you all for scientific experiments.
(Dad goes on to blame the Anglican church for not standing up to the (bloody) Catholics (who are to be filling up the whole world with children they cannot afford to be bloody feeding) when it came to talking about contraception in the UN and WHO forums on overpopulation, and the whole family breaks out into song... You know the rest.)
There are Jews in the world, there are Buddhists,
Anglicans and Catholics, and then,
There are those that outsource to Mohammed, but
I've never been one of them...
Not only are research costs low, but there is a skilled work force to conduct the trials.
Umm, so essentially their skill is they're sick and need drugs? Talk about a back handed compliment. Well, Rahim, you have just the skills we're looking for, Leprosy.
I'm not sure what kind of FDA-equivalent the Indian government has, but there's definitely an advantage to conducting your human trials in places where people aren't breathing down your neck.
I'll bet that India and the rest of the "developing" world will be the next scientific powers given their highly educated and motivated workforce, and the fact that they're a little less backward when it comes to science. Example: South Korea is taking on a cloning project while we're still fighting over teaching evolution in school, abortion and stem cell research.
Sometimes it makes me wish we'd let the South win the civil war. They could live in backward redneck-land and the rest of the country could get on with evolving the species.
How is this any different than the poor people here who get paid to test drugs? Just because it's happening in India now as well it's news? Yes India is another developed country just like ours with people who want to get paid to pop pills. As well as get paid to do all the same things we do. It's not like they're an alien race or something.
The Constant Gardener anyone?
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
For the UBGPG (US Brotherhood of Guinea Pigs and Gerbils): "Don't outsource our future! Drive American! Test American! Insert American!"
They'll be able afford those $100 laptops.
I do recall that a lot of the medical advancements we are enjoying today are a result of the many barbaric experiments done by Nazi scientists on their prisoners back in WWII. So are the insights they gained from their immoral experiements bad enough that we shouldnt use it on moral grounds?
Just like in The Gold Rush, many Indians are forced to eat their own shoes to survive.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I realize that countries with less financial clout than the U.S. have a hard time building up their infrastructure. But seriously, how much do you de-value your people before you've done more harm than good? If you never show the world that you're worth more than being the place to get your discount call-center-answerer/human-lab-rat, how do you ever expect them to see you as anything else? It's a difficult climb in the modern westernized world to financial strength, but this certainly seems like a horrible idea.
If digg.com can implement a decent comment system, then this site is finished. http://www.digg.com/search?search=india&submit=Sub mit
"Not only are research costs low, but there is a skilled work force to conduct the trials," he said. In the rush to reap profits, Philpott cautions that drug companies may not be sensitive to how poverty can undermine the spirit of informed consent. "Individuals who participate in Indian clinical trials usually won't be educated. Offering $100 may be undue enticement; they may not even realize that they are being coerced," he said.
"Doctors are easier to recruit for trials because they don't have to go through the same ethics procedures as their Western colleagues," Ecks said. "And patients ask fewer questions about what is going on."
Hmm. There are obviously some ethical questions here, but I think that it is for the best. Cheaper trials means more research, and the tests are only conducted when it is almost certain to succeed. The US is much too stringent with medicine, because of lawsuits. People with shorter life expectancies don't care quite as much about the risks of testing drugs, and the sooner drugs are out there helping people, the better.
Cue comments about how this is the most evil thing ever, and that nothing is as valuable as a human life (which is why, instead of buying christmas presents, you will donate to third world countries' medicine.)
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
In fact, this is one of the biggest problems in our current medical knowledgebase. Many important drug and poison studies have been conducted in India due to its unique mix of being technologically advanced enough to manage a study, structured enough to organize them, and having a large body of people willing to join them.
The big downside is that India is not an ethnically diverse country. Thus, the results are not necessarily transferrable.
Back in the '50s and '60s, the PCB studies were performed in India. PCBs were found to be highly toxic. It wasn't until the '70s and '80s that followup studies identified the fact that PCBs are vastly (as in 100x type vastly) more toxic to people of Indian and Japanese descent than to people of Caucasion and African descent. If the studies had been done in South America, America, Canada, or Europe, we'd probably still be using PCBs all over the place.
It is critical for the further advancement of medicine that we move beyond our current statistical approach to medicine and studies and start defining which genetic and environmental factors are indications or contraindications for specific medicines. Many medicines kill some people and save others. Rather than tossing them aside, we must start learning to identify when they will kill and when they will save. That requires tests across diverse populations. India doesn't qualify.
Karma says you take the good American jobs, you get the bad ones too. Nelson says ha ha.
In other news: No more animals are used for testing, all animal rights activist rejoice!
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Less competition for us!
http://www.novartisclinicaltrials.com/etrials/home .do?pl_id=bmretk000019
n eapigFULL.html
http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/guineapig/gui
Why go to India's poor ? The poor in the US can go to these links and do all types of experiments, for a variety of disorders.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
This isin't about saving a few bucks (yes I know its more then a few bucks) on medical testing its about not respecting human life in an equal manner.
"Third World lives are worth much less than the European lives. That is what colonialism was all about," said Srirupa Prasad, a visiting assistant professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
hits the nail on the head. unfortunatly.
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
Sadly, abusing the underprivileged and poor for medical reasons occurs more frequently than one would think. For example, in addidtion to drug testing, during surgical residencies, most of the interns learn new procedures on the homeless or poor that in the hospital. Residents have to learn techniques somehow, and they are inevitably going to deliever sub-par results the first few times of doing something. Thus, the practice of using the underprivileged as "test-dummies" is unstated but widley accepted. Ideas for solutions to this moral dilemma?
check out my music biatches. www.seanduffymusic.com
...of the rich exploiting the poor, I don't know what is.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I know her as well, and it's been a real boon for her. Turns out her second head can control it almost entirely so her grades are unnatural. And don't let her challenge you to a game of twister.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Oh great as if our customer service isint bad enough already, now we are going to be drugging them to the gills and then sending them to man the phones!!
American calling for health care information: "Could you please tell me if my condition is covered?"
Indian customer service: "One moment sir, Ive got the munchies, be right back"
*transfers the call*
New customer service rep: "Woah man... the phone is all blinkey"
You know, there's a reason why doctors go through ethics procedures:
For years people right here in the US have been selling body fluids and enrolling in drug trials to make extra cash.
But there's a moral issue when it is done in some other country?
Can we quite patronizing the people? They're poor not retarded.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
God Help us if some new strain of drug-resistent virus (or some lab-made superbug) gets loose in such an environment.
No, I'm serious god help us, and god help the poor people who will be a) the first exposed b) the worst cared for and c) the first to die if the disease is mortal.
This sounds like a recipe for disaster. I, personally, would avoid drugs that had not been tested on people genetically similar to myself. People are not identical in their ability to absorb, metabolize, respond to, or excrete medications. A drug that works well in one population can easily fail to help (or have fatal side effects) in people in a different population.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
In other news: The "Body Shop" opens research branch in India
Now at least I can rest assured that my shampoo has not been tested but on animals - but on Apu and other human kind to make sure it is safe. I need not know what happens when the shampoo is not safe for humans but I know that fluffy and other animals are safe from the tests.
That's where the issue is. In US and Canada, there is drug testing, but the people doing it aren't seen as lab rats; they're seen as human beings. In India, I wouldn't bet a dime that they give a flyin' fuck about the patients.
I have been to India on several occasions and find it irresponsible of not only companies but also other countries to sell banned drugs, pesticides and a wrath of other 'goodies' in India. I saw first hand pesticides that are banned in North America being used openly, old drugs, and of course questionable mixtures of leaded gasoline, kerosene, and others thereby creating a lot of pollution.
Given that India is considered to be a developing nation, it is irresponsible of the 'west' to dump their banned substances there and in other countries. This creates new caste system of sorts - Westerners get good, safe chemicals, while the rest goes 'elsewhere' - thereby needlessly affecting millions of people.
Unfortunately, this issue is not headline news and does not get the attention it deserves.
Such practices are not new. Here is another example: "New York's HIV experiment" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4 038375.stm
many years ago, I had dinner with a fellow who had just been hired as a director of regulatory affairs by a now long gone pharma company. He mentioned that one of his first tasks had been to burn the files to dangerous to have around, and when asked for an examples, said, well, we have a Korean MD who had been taking suitcases of experimental compounds to Korea, and going up into the mountains, where people don't have any money, and injecting volunteers with large amounts of these untested chemicals (for u younguns, Korea used to be quite poor).
Now, apparently, it is legal....Thank you right wing, GOP CATO the vast right wing conspiracy including mellon,koch CATO and others
Their descendants have now lived long enough to see (parts of it) repeated.
Y'know, I've never been ashamed of my American citizenship until now. This is wrong on the face of it - no need for protracted debate to see that this is another example of the strong using the weak for their (our) own ends.
I was almost able to ignore our (USA's) past arrogance, our willingness to utilize political and military pressure to inappropriately enforce our will on others; but this is seriously over the top. Human experimentation? Paging Doctor Mengele.
In closing, somebody please tell me that these are multinational corporations, not USA-based?
(the silence was thunderous in its intensity)
This is a very interesting statement. One part of patent theory is that commercial organizations won't invest in developing new products unless they have a guarantee that someone else can't just copy their product and sell it. It will be interesting to see if abiding by drug patents promotes drug manufacturing and research to move to India, or if it means that they can't afford the patent costs and nobody can afford drugs there anymore.
I fully understand the importance of the FDA. It is extremely important to the safety of the American public and its doctors to have a reliable and unbiased source of information regarding drugs.
One could argue that the market could regulate these drugs. If a drug company release a drug that did serious damage to 20% of the people taking it, this information would spread quickly and soon most people would stop taking that drug. But I would argue it is far better to have to undergo the rigorous testing the FDA puts most of the drugs through before they're made public so the dangers are known before it's available to most people.
On the other hand, I think there is a lot to be said for making the FDA an "informational" body only. In other words, it would do the same testing it does now, and all drugs would have to be submitted before release just as they are now, but regardless of the outcome of that testing the drug companies could make that drug publicly available. Before taking a drug, or before a doctor prescribes a drug, this database would be consulted to see the dangers and see how effective it is. The patients and doctors could then make their own decision as to whether or not this drug is good or bad.
If I'm dying of cancer I should be able to try anything I damn well please... in fact, if I've got a bad cold I should be able to try anything I damn well please. If I'm stupid and try the pharmacological equivalent of rat poison, then so be it... but the government shouldn't be able to limit my options.
I realize its trendy to pretend everyone in any way involved with peta is a nutjob, but most aren't. Most peta members will be anything but thrilled.
And second, human beings are animals, there is no reduction in animal suffering going on.
I thought humans where classified as Animals (or is that just how you classify certain people)?
So when they say it was not tested on Animals do you assume humans are included in that category?
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
Lack of diversity during certain phases is a good thing. It improves the signal to noise ratio in the statistics. It's why they use identical white mice. It's a bad move, when you extrapolate. Which is what someone did in your example. Luckily they erred on the safe side. Still, a good study should move from the narrow to the broad.
In general, humans are pretty genetically uniform. But some crucial differences do pop up. Heck, think of testing something as benign as dairy products. Most of the world can't drink milk.
Fun bit o' trivia: a significant number of chemicals that cause cancer in rats, don't in mice. And visa versa. Makes you wonder how reliable those tests are extrapolated to humans!
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
At least not until they try a new fancy drug.. Then they might be rich but sure their brain will vaporize!
Sure, coercion is obvious at the end of a gun. However, to someone with a 1st grade education, "your family is going to die of starvation, I'll give you two months' wages if you swallow this pill. It might kill you, but your family will live," well, that's coercion. When the cost of a human life is a hundred bucks, which is less than one hour time of a researcher in the U.S., stupendously unethical decisions will be made. Give 'em all HIV and pump 'em full of Yak piss. Hey, it might work. For $100, why not give it a shot?
This is not the arena in which to test anarcho-capitalist libertarianism.
That will depend on how the drug companies are performing these trails. Check out the Constant Gardener for some real scary shit.
My other OS is the MCP!
I find the practice of 'preying on india's poor' abhorrent.
When I was in college, I did a project discussing the very unethical research conducted by Nazi Scientists in Concentration camps and the biological and chemical warfare projects the japanese undertook.
However, for all the suffering inflicted by the nazi doctors, the west, after winning the war, took the research and used to pioneer procedures such as the heart transplant. (Please do not construe this as an apology for the holocaust or condoning the holocaust. I'm just saying that unethical medical research led to breakthroughs.)
Now, not to seem to alarmist, but the point I wanted to make is:
China's record of disregard for human rights.
Apathy toward prisoner's rights in general (most people don't really care to think about the quality of life of all the people they're feeding and housing via their tax dollars.)
The need for medical test subjects for emerging fields (BioTech, New Vaccines, etc).
If its not happening now, I think it will.
And I'm not the first to suggest it. In Larry Niven's 'Known Space' Universe, condemned criminals (life in prison or death sentence) had their organs harvested so that healthy people could extend their life span (before the scientists in the 'Known Space' universe discovered 'Booster Spice').
Soon, immortality will just be a few affordable transplants away!
The ethical lows many multinational corporations will stoop to should not be surprising. These same companies that love to excercise "Free Trade" are the one who were bitching and moaning because poor old people in the united States were re-importing drugs that were sent overseas. These are the same companies that have worked to get the codex (google codex drugs to find out more). The companies are working to have the supplement companies put out of business so that they can force people who need medicine to consume their crap (the side effects are just about as bad as the disease the drug is supposed to cure). The companies see the Indians as well as us as mere merchandise or cash cows. The same goes for the politician, courts, and yes, also the President. The people of the Police States of America will be forced to pay for a prescription drug benefit that only saves about 1 out of every 14 people any real money. The people of the P.S.A. as well as (The many countries of) Europe and many other places think they are free but aren't. People will not be free until they put away their difference and stand together against the government-cartel alliances. The corporations and nearly all of the governments have learned to stand together in order to squeeze more wealth out of the masses. It is time for the masses to do the same and take back what rightfully belong to the masses. This is where people of all nationalities and religions need to come together.
How about testing out some sterilization drugs?
The human race is artificial intelligence created using object orientated programming.
What he said... unless you're not of the "human race", you shouldn't worry too much about the genetics. What you *should* worry about it is all the OTHER stuff, like diet/local pollutants, etc.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Sometimes it makes me wish we'd let the South win the civil war. They could live in backward redneck-land and the rest of the country could get on with evolving the species.
Outstanding! One is rarely treated to such a display of irony: a sweeping, uninformed, all-inclusive condemnation of a huge swath of the country, contending that they, what... are losers because they make sweeping, uninformed judgements about things?
I don't suppose you've met any of the loony hardcore Catholics from New England? Or perhaps some Mormons from the upper-Rockies area? Or maybe some urban Baptists from, say, Philadelphia? Or perhaps some addled-brained Wiccan Nitwits from Seattle? Or maybe some Orthodox Jews from downtown NY,NY? There are people with retro-silly sensibilities all over this country, and always have been. New England is still infested with Puritans. No amount of MTV or porn spam seems to cure it.
On the other hand, I've met some of the most literate, gracious, science-informed, fundy-allergic, down-to-earth people in the world south of the Mason-Dixon Line. On balance, they're often considerably more rational and forward-thinking than some of the culture-rot-population I've met lurking in a lot of the northern cities. I'm just as tired of urbane, metrosexual pseudo-intellectuals who think that hydrogen is a new energy source being hidden by the government as you are of the hillbilly that thinks he's been abducted by aliens because he drank too much cough syrup.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
We benefit from the suffering of others every day. Sweatshop labor is still going strong; so are cheaper relaxed safety standards available to "third-world countries". (I mean non-Western countries we exploit.) How do you think Walmart can get such low prices from their foreign suppliers? We save a dollar on an umbrella that some guy lost a finger to make because the machine lacked a safety part that would have slowed production down. These countries also have relaxed pollution standards as well, so you can dump all the chemicals you want into the streams. Look at the Killer Coke campaign. Where the public outrage there? In any case, the medical subjects in this case are being paid more than they would have made, and they have received medical care they would not have received otherwise. It's not like the doctors are just injecting random chemicals into them, after all.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The good things about using the poor for drug testing are;
1) There are lots of them
2) You don't have to pay them much
3) They have all sorts of illnesses to treat
4) No one will miss them
Godwin's Law strikes again.
I have funny experience with Indian medicines.
When I was in India like 10 years ago I bought eye drops against conjunctivitis called Itone or something. They worked so well that I bought like 20 bottles for my friends with similar problems. I was a little perplexed why some bottles were marked with red letters "Physician sample". I returned to Europe and after 3 years I saw a poster in a local pharmacy which advertised a new, revolutionary drug that was just released, the same Itone I had been using for several years.
My wife developed some stomach problems in India. She visited a doctor who gave her some medicine that took away all problems in one day. In Europe the same stomach problem returned but the doctors were horrified when she told what kind of medicine she was taking in India. They prescribed some other treatment but that was not very effective and it took 2 months to completely cure her illness. I guess the European doctors were not so experienced in tropical diseases.
I know of another person who was treated by some Indian fakir who gave him ash from yagyas (sacrificial fire). Supposedly harmless thing that was simply blessed by his mantras and yantras. Nevertheless it was very effective and made the person very peaceful. Before this person was suffering from the bipolar disorder but he didn't want to take drugs because they made him dull. But simple ash worked so good for him. Long story short, after several years it turned out that the fakir was mixing very powerful psychotropic drug with ash and giving to him. Well, in the West it would be considered cheating but in India who cares if it did well to the patient. And if someone dies in the process that is not a big problem, there are already so many people in India that one person more or less doesn't make any difference.
Testing Drugs on India's Rich:
1) There are a lot fewer of them.
2) They'd sue our asses off.
All fun and games until the corporations hold so much power that you find that its you standing in line to test drugs to feed your family.
Welfare, social security, food stamps, and even 401k's could all dissappear tommorrow. You think companies want to pay pensions or help you with your retirement? The government and corporations are slowly making more and more people dependant on them for every day life. Many people would be homeless without subsidized housing. The only reason people aren't fully seeing how corporations are paying people less and less is because the government keeps giving out more and more handouts to the poor coporate workers. The government, in a surprise move one day, will say they are broke and can no longer afford to help the minimum wage corporate employees. You'll see multiple families living in single bedroom apartments all working minimum wage jobs just to afford the rent. The rich will be the few who can afford a single bedroom apartment just for their family because they are willing to be human guinea pigs.
Probably better though to just ignore the problem because it will never happen to you. Your special, the government and corporations told you so.
Seriously, nothing you are saying makes any sense. What suicide bomber, is supposed to see the reason in what argument? And who said anything about the value of human life at all, much less in comparison with other animals lives?
It's nice to see in plain view how slashbots would like to mod any comment modded down solely because it didn't agree with his own view. That is moderation abuse, boy.
In fact, your sarcasm sounds perfectly reasonable even if you couldn't see it. Slashbots love to cry about freedom of choice, and I'm for it all the way.
Well, what with the oppressive regulation and massive lawsuits here in the U.S. I believe there's only one pharma company that still claims to be U.S. based (Merck) and I think they're moving operations to England. I know that something like 90% of all medicines are now produced outside the U.S., so I think your worries that these companies are U.S. are likely to be unfounded. The raging nanny state legislation in the U.S. has made it almost impossible to do any medical research here.
Indeed, no one should be surprised: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Stu dy
You know something like this will happen again.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
New medication has to get tested on humans and companies pay for that. Any rich person can sign up but usually the poor do b/c they need the money. That's how life is. The rich get better health care, better food, etc. In some cases the rich to want to be the lab rats; for some cancer drug candidates there have been scandals that rich people paid to get into the trials.
I actually think that India's poor is better for them, because otherwise those people would not have access to any medication at all. Better an experimental drug that has undergone extensive testing on animals than nothing. Plus test subjects get medical monitoring and test they would otherwise not afford.
Clones!
They'll solve all our ethical dilemmas!
Hi, how are you? I'm really fine eh. I've been a test animal for medications more than a couple of time already (of course, none were as experimental as it gets in India) and i gotta tell you, it's great :)
Were i do it, you get thre in the evening, they feed you abundantly three times a day, use steril and safe tools and environnement to get accurate data and you get to take one pill of whatever is on the menu. Couple days later and a couple drops of blood later you are free from the haven of clinical environment and given the BIG FAT money.
Really, it's what paid my university (and still does)
As for human rights and all, I'll only say it all depends on how you are informed, treated and paid :P
Bah.
Ethics matter; ethics help assure good science.
There's definitely an advantage to conducting your human trials in places where people aren't breathing down your neck.
Ever frakkin' wonder why the FDA dares to breath down peoples necks? Do you think that people should be informed of the risks of the test; the potential for long term harm. Do you want pharmaceutical companies to document the positive and the adverse reactions of medical testing?
Thank God we've found poor, uneducated people living in a country with a rampant caste system - where the poor are of even less spiritual value than the elite! Testing can proceed apace. And don't worry, the ends do justify the means.
Gee, the South Koreans can have cloning by having one of their lab assistants donate her eggs - amongst numerous other problems with that particular series of experiments.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
... but there is a skilled work force to conduct the trials
And a nearly-unlimited pool of willing experimental anim^H^H^H^H human test subjects. Personally, I'd hate to be a member of that "skilled work force" administering untested drugs to the Indian population. I expect there will be a fair number of severely compromised and/or dead subjects. Say, maybe a requirement for an H1B visa should be to join one of these research programs: if you survive, you get to come to America and work.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Personally I cannot blame American companies for doing something like this - after all, they are running a business. It is really the Indian Government's reponsibility to ensure high standards and proper accountability for drug testing. But then, a small "donation" of a few thousand dollars is often enough to buy the silence of most govt. officials.
Denial is not a river in Egypt
I love indian :P
These better be drugs with minimal health risks... The last thing we need is India's poverty hating US drug companies for doping some of there people knowing it may cause deaths, and in turn hating the US because of it. I have no gripes against hating drug companies since thousands of Americans alone probably die a year due to price gouging and not being able to afford medication that isn't available in generic form yet.... Yeah, it's part of the economy, and drives research...... But I'm sure there are probably a lot of drugs that are sold for way more then they cost to make, thus benifiting the creator for having exclusive rights to selling the drug, and lining their pockets even more w/ high prices.... If I'm wrong about them, someone feel free to correct me (and doing good in another way like donations doesn't make them good, since they aren't the last resort for life in that case).
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Life expectancy in india seems to hover between 58-60 years. Only 4% of the population are over 60.
Contrast with 77-84 years in the West or Japan.
In these kinds of conditions (trust me they are apalling in some places), it's really hard to decide what's better - Shitty conditions with experimental drugs or shitty conditions without.
You have to understand that this is not like some kind of peaceful community in Bavaria where people get to live till 90. People are dying there from Dyzentheria, Hepatitis B, Malaria, Leoprosy, and what have you not.
As India gets economically more powerful, It is likely that there will be a demand for regulating experimental drug testing and the Indians themselves will kick out the pharmaceuticals. Right now they're still having trouble setting up working sewer systems, a problem that the Romans had figured out about 2000 odd years ago..
I do not see any reference to that here. Coercion doesn't require anything but that threat of harm is used to persuade. That's it.
/koerss/
u k
coerce
verb persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats.
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/coerce?view=
On one hand, if pharmas are testing out drugs which potentially have a great benefit to mankind, at some point they need to be tested on humans. The human body is such a complexity of systems, there is no way to simulate this or escape the need for human testing. If prospective test subjects are properly informed, have an appropriately high reward-to-risk ratio, and have the freedom to choose, it seems OK to me.
On the other hand, what if pharmas don't exercise due diligence before going to human trials? They're supposed to go through stages of animal testing, then young healthy men, etc. Are pharmas going to accelerate the process and jump to poor starving folks earlier in the testing? What if pharmas cavalierly kill helpless people just to test Viagra 2.0? What if the test subjects aren't informed, or have no choice (e.g. political prisoners forced into guineapig-hood)? These are not OK. The potential for abuse abounds.
Y'know, I've never been ashamed of my American citizenship until now.
Somehow I find that hard to believe. If you live in a country where it's government actively emprissons people without trial and deports people for torture to forreign countries for years, why do you now only find it distracting that some multinationals are gone test on people in exchange for money ? Especially if it's a practise already for years in any country over the world which people silently aprove and use in order to get extra cash.
In closing, somebody please tell me that these are multinational corporations, not USA-based?
Have you truly ever expected ethical beaviour of any big corporation, wherever they are based ? Ethical behaviour is a cost to them. It's only when unethical beaviour is gone cost more they'll comply with the ethics. The cost of those ethics is mostly dependend on the policies of the countries they are operating in. Why would it not be a USA based corporations ? It's not like USA policy makers are dedicated to raise the cost localy for unethical behaviour on remote sites ?
The only shocking thing here today was not the heading about standard corporate practise but the overal aproval and defense of that system by many slashdotters. Or even the occasional : hey, we're doing them a favour, they can be our hero's. It shows that lot's of educated people have a complete lack of ethics or use double standards. AS long as they think they don't show up in the equation it's ok. I'm sure, when reports of blatant abuse of this system pop up in a few years, the same people are gone be the first to say things like "wir haben es nicht gewust" or "thats the prices we payed for progress". Failing to see their not the ones that pay the price and that their reasoning doesn't differentiate from the refered doctor mengele.
The US should not accept trial results from trials conducted overseas. That's prudent for other reasons as well. It's not a complete solution, but it would help.
outright racist as worst. A person (usually non U.S) has to spend just a few days on the site to realize this. Usually most of us ignore and sometimes even enjoy such discussions and take the site for what it is and don't normally have the time or inclination to argue against this bias. The low quality and intelligence of the posters is a final deterrent.
As I have some time at hand today, I would like to point out to the very small minority of rational readers here that while slashdot considers it acceptable to play a scaremonger with articles ranging from tongue-in-cheek criticism to being of an outright inflamatory nature, it conviniently decides to reject a front page article from the most prominent Indian English daily The Times of India which concerns slashdot itself and shows an unpleasant side of outsourcing.
This is interesting as even the most biased party would atleast pretend to be non-prejudiced by publishing the front-page opinion of the most important newspaper of the country which is at the very center of this whole debate, while agreeing to publish irrelevant information from trivial sources.
The submitted article was this (reproduced below): Indian techie alleges racial abuse
Indian techie alleges racial abuse
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA [ Sunday, December 11, 2005 12:53:48 pmTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
To hear the full blast of invective against outsourcing, offshoring and other aspects of job migration from the United States, stop by at Slashdot.org . An online forum for nerds and nerdy natterings, it teems with angry young men writing under nom de guerres such as AnonymousCoward and TempestData, sgt_doom and pubjames. Many of them are obviously American, but you can see the odd Indian signature locked in verbal combat with a flaming Yankee. On the day Bill Gates announced that Microsoft would be hiring another 3,000 people in India and investing some $1.7 billion (a lot of it towards opening outlets to sell MS products and making more money), nerdy narcissists were out in strength. "Why worry about H1B visas when you can just buy India?" sneered someone writing under the pseudonym Heck. "So, what's the Indian equivalent to H1B?" asked someone called Hmmm. "More companies going to India? Well, I guess I am going down to McDonald's to pick up some applications -- anybody want me to pick them one up as well?" King Vance lamented. "From experience of remote call centres, you'll get more sense out of what a dog says," related SatanicPuppy. "I find they speak English quite well," retorted someone. "In fact, they often speak English better than the ebonified English you get at times from some of the support folks based in NYC." "Microsoft Curry XP coming soon! And it's damn hot!" mocked someone else. "Khidkiyaan2006," bragged another, evidently Indian. It was corrosive sometimes, nasty occasionally, but mostly it was good collegiate fun. Some of the more poisonous posts sullied the many intelligent observations made on both sides of the debate, but it was a welcome letting off of steam in a largely anonymous online forum. Heck, online flamebait is better than real-life threats and violence, as Neelima Tirumalasetti will say. A Texas-based Indian techie who came to the US in 1998, Neelima wishes her tormentors had lit into her on Slashdot.org. Instead, some days after her company Caremark Inc began outsourcing work to India in early 2004, her team members began harassing her -- mocking her accent, excluding her from conversations, and essaying jokes and insults based on her race, ethnicity and national origin, according to an affidavit she filed in a Texas court. A co-worker ambushed her in the ladies room, she says, and called her a "brown-skinned b****" and a "dirty Indian". When she reported the harassment to the management, it first did not take cognisance of her complaint. She was divested from major responsibilities in a project.
As one of those "ugly Americans", I must concur. There are quite of few very bigotted people in the US. It's one of the sad side effects of being "politically correct". Way back when, people had names, making them individuals. Now that we've become *euphemism*-americans one an all, our humanity has been taken away. Hopefully, we can go back to being people again someday, rather than an amorphous mass.
The reason is, it is not ethics that is driving all this, but rather it is fear. Fear of the law, fear of "ethics committees" in the field of practice, fear of negative publicity, fear of funding vanishing, ...etc
...
So, it is not really ethics per se
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Where is the Indian government in all of this?
Oh, I forget, this is the gov't rather get nuclear weapon than give its people running water!
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
Are they getting treated at lower cost since they are helping in development process + because of the risk involved? It is mutual benefit - the companies get to test their drugs on more realistic mass and the people get the benefit of cutting edge research.
My grandfather, who is no longer with us, was a cardiologist. He told me about witnessing researchers in India testing therapies for heart attacks on street people brought into the hospital in cardiac arrest. He said they used REALLY BIG NEEDLES to inject vitamin E into the heart. As my grandfather said, "Of course they died!". This was likely in the 1960's or 1970's. Nothing new here, folks.
"This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it." -- HAL
I'm sorry, but if people that are anti-animal testing are also against this, then they really should think about what they want. Let's face it, drugs need to be tested. If they weren't, instead of 10 lab rats dying, thousands of humans could die, and whilst I will take a neutral stance here (despite my own opinions), 10 rats dying is bette than thousands of humans.
Ok, so let's put animals aside. What else do you test on? Plants? Nope. You're left with humans. Oh, what do you know, what are they testing on? Humans! There you go.
If anyone dares suggest that it's not right because they're Indian and poor, I think I will personally have to traceroute you and kill your extended family. Just because they live in a LEDC (Less Economically Developed Country) doesn't mean that they are being exploited.
It's like children working in China in factories under "Slave Conditions". Well, if they weren't working at all, they wouldn't be getting any money, and their family would kick them out, so surely it's better that they're paid the minimal amounts they are and can have a job?
Everyone is already concerned about the people. There's tons of organizations out there trying to help people. Just because some other people choose to try to help animals instead doesn't mean they don't think people matter. If you want to bitch about people caring about animals that's up to you, but quit trying to pretend caring about animals equals not caring about people.
Come on buddy west sponsered human right watch groups having nothing other than finding reasons for their masters to invade countries.
The members of the erstwhile lower caste in India enjoy far better opportunities and are more well placed than african americans or native americans in USA. And native americans were slaughtered for trying nothing. And I do not need to point you to a propoganda web site for that.
6 of the top ten are based in the United States. All of them have research labs throughout the world. I'm pretty sure all of them hire researchers regardless of race. The ones in the US most certainly do.
I'm thinking the outsourcing may be more of a coarse drug test to weed out the more harmful drugs and thier effects before investing in US testing (and potential lawsuits) for FDA approval.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
As a child I always wondered why indian movies rarely had villians with plans of world domination unlike most hollywood moovies. Now I understand we as Indians are happy to live our lives peacefully sometimes in deart poverty, sometimes in happiness. We never went and invaded countries on the name of exploration. We never committed genocides that eradicated whole continents of their native populations. Because we value life and try to be happy with whatever we have. And please do not bring in caste system. It is no different than a class system. English is the primary reason why jobs are outsourced to India. However we never wanted to learn english. It was imposed upon us by a barbaric and inhuman british colonialism. Our industries were destroyed by scanctions imposed by the britishers. However we never complained. And today also we have not asked for these jobs to be outsourced to India. It is your own people who want to do it for better profits. Why hate the Indians for that ??
Why should these companies be ethical towards a group of people "below their caste", to a group of people who are incapable of defending themselves... (Indian society is not sue-happy like that of the US).
And if being "ethical" causes they companies more hardship, financial cost, or headache, then what is their motovation??? Remember, we are discussing a country where the local Coca-Cola & Pepsi plants use polluted water in their soft-drinks... (e.g. really bad pesticides and/or bacteria like typhoid)
He volunteered to test medical treatments for $5,000. I sure as hell wouldn't do it. It was enough to film his first movie "El Mariachi".
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
In terms of trusting medical studies, I'd rank it like this:
1. Japan
2. Germany
3. India
4. U.S. (Normally I'd rank us at #1, but with the current administration, we've outsourced the chicken farming to the foxes).
In terms of skill and serious attention to detail, the Japanese have proven themselves time and again. They've proven as good at detailed study and refinement as the Americans have proven at inventing crazy ways to do things with less physical labor. Lazyness, clearly, being the mother of invention. Now, that leaves the French. Insert your own joke here, I'm on overload.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
If by "claims to be U.S. based" you mean "has their world headquarters in the U.S.", I believe you're wrong - there are also Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Pfizer, for example.
(Your other claims seem a bit bogus as well. Am I just responding to a troll here?)
For years people right here in the US have been selling body fluids and enrolling in drug trials to make extra cash.
But there's a moral issue when it is done in some other country?
There is when the reason for doing it in the other country is to get away with things that wouldn't be allowed "right here in the US", you dipshit.
Don't forget that poverty easily leads to desperation.
... just dont become homeless!
I remember the good 'ol days when laid-off outsourced american programmers would get the guinneypig jobs. Now those are gone too :-)
Table-ized A.I.
I wonder if you asked a chimp/gorilla in sign language if they'd like to help people by undergoing painful tests, whether any of them would volunteer for the greater good?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Times of India is worse than tabloid quality newspaper, and they decide to publish such crap on their front page is no suprise.
Don't pay any credence to this story, there are always some jingoists on both sides of the border.
Creativity uninhibited www.kreeti.com
If you look at this forum American side seems to be definitely leading by a wide margin.
Printed Circuit Boards?
There's even apparently a cure for AIDS somewhere in africa (as my actually rather great science teacher from eighth grade told me), and it's supposed to be safeguarded by companies who are dictating the price slowly but surely.
Big companies like to get their greasy hands on it "before" anyone else knows about it, then claim it as their own. In the end of the day, this Indian testing thing is wrong, I think they should breed special purpose lab rats (not humans) that they can test things on... if they want a human, why don't they make a complex IT based thing that reflects a digitized human body? I think in this day and age, that would be an unltimately difficult, but worthy of attention and money project.
#!/bin/bash
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I think I'll email PETA complaining that they should reconsider using animal fur as bedding for other animals. I'm not sure I would want to use a human skin as my bedding...
-tom
Iam sure no one would refute that sad fact. It 'applies' not only for drug testing,but for everything today.
Why does yahoo do this
It is called slavery, pure and simple.
no troubles about human testing, but there has to be a limit on what actually can be tested, and have to be clear on the side effects. I don't think they would go up to the levels of Nazi/Japanese WW2 testing, but still some regulation has to be in place.
Manojar - pronounced like Manager
You point out some of the problems. On the other hand some of the 'generic drugs' (i.e. Indian company manufactured) produced in India and sold in India are perfectly fine, and much cheaper than 'western brand name' drugs. This means that some people who otherwise would be able to afford *no medication* can have medicine. If you're earning one dollar a day and that pays for your food and clothes etc and what's left is for medicines, you can't afford the prices charged by 'western brands'. A case in point is the price of AIDS retroviral drugs sold in Africa: lawyers from western countries jumping in to prohibit local companies manufacturing and selling their own versions at more affordable prices to save the lives of their own citizens.
It's interesting - sounds like you're saying Indian drugs made for India are ok, but export ones are the problem. Do you have references? Sounds like this is something that needs to be regulated, and that some countries don't check drugs coming into their health systems?
Now, the question is, who has the more money to spend on communicating the risks to the public? Is it a government agency with a limited budget earmarked for research and testing, or is it a multinational parmaceuitcal corporation which figures it can recoup 80% of the developmnt costs for this turkey before word of mouth spreads and they have to rebrand it as ratpoison?
I don't disagree with your overall aim, I think the potential for willful and systematic abuse is too high under the scheme you propose.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
The moral issue is that the poor in another country are less protected from dangerous drugs.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Your sense of what newspapers are tabloids and what are not are quite intriguing. So if TOI is worse than a tabloid, exactly which Indian newspaper do you classify as a 'national' newspaper or the 'largest English newspaper in India'?
There is no patch for stupidity
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You mean like aids testing on orphans or nonconsentual syphilis, cancer and hepatitis tests on people who were not even informed of the test or radiation testing on retarded children?
Just before I saw this on slashdot, I was reading an article on an Arabic website reporting on the same thing happeninig in Jordan. Young people recive small maonuts of money for being subjected to drug trials and are recruited for the tests by private agencies.
I've noticed that the majority of my posts which get modded up are very shortly modded down as "troll" or "flamebait". This is new in my experience (and I've been /.'ing for a while). Is somebody systematically watching my post, or am I just so close to the center that being modded both up and down is inevitable? Or did the President of Iran do the modding?
The quality of online editions of most Indian paper is horrible. I don't read the print edition, so I cannot comment on that. TOI might be the largest English newspaper, but definitely not a national newspaper.
Look at the headlines and the front page of TOI for any day during the last one year. Unless someone is using adblock, the page is full of ads, and the google ads which you see on a page are good indicator of what kind of material does it have. Compare it with any other tabloid newspapers.
Then the front page has sleazy pictures from indiatimes. The stories are titled in a way so as not to look professional but to titillate you, and the content is most of the time biased, and quite often badly written. Besides they give more importance and prominence to controversial stories than really important news. People die in mishaps or accident, and I get to know about them in BBC or NYT before I see them in TOI, a recent point in case is the stampede in Chennai, that speaks volume.
Unfortunately, there is no Indian English online newspaper which can be called national and is worth reading (Hindu is pretty good, but not national).
Creativity uninhibited www.kreeti.com
Why was my post modded as flamebait? I didn't intend it to be.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
They should outlaw drug testing in vivo altogether. We have computer simulations, use them! Test the drugs on the scientists!