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

a true story

[cinnamon colbert]

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