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'"

Comments

Re:No Surprise

[ben_white]

Seems to me I remember a fertility treatment called thalidomide....and a bunch of babies born without arms and legs being the reason for that. Isn't it amazing how profit creates short memories?

Not a fertility treatment, but a treatment for morning sickness (see here). And interestingly enough, never approved for distribution in the US (until 1998 for leprosy and myeloma).

Re:Wait

[hopethisnickisnottak]

Except that though the choice may be semi-informed, it won't be free when the person has a choice between being killed by drugs or killed by starvation (along with their family).

What crap!
Not every poor person in India dies of starvation. Infact, starvation related deaths have gone down significantly.
And the drugs that are being tested have been approved for human testing by the Indian equivalent of the FDA. Yes, we have institutions that help protect our rights too. It isn't just in your country that people have rights, you know.

There's a reason why India is being targeted.

Yeah, and unfortunately you don't know about it.
India is being 'targeted' because the Indian population shows incredible genetic diversity unavailable anywhere else. This diversity means that with a few test cases, you can test your drugs on someone with a mediterranean genetic makeup, an australoid genetic makeup, a mongoloid genetic makeup etc. and various combinations of the above. It's not just about the money. Otherwise they would go to Chinese prisons.