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Parexel Destroys Immune Systems, Not Liable
A reader writes: "The four TGN1412 test victims learned recently that they have no detectable t-cells, which makes it "likely" (read certain) they will suffer from numerous diseases and truncated lifespans. It has been determined that Parexel was negligent in its aftercare of the victims. The victims have already suffered severe injuries such as gangrene requiring the amputation of all toes and three fingers (without toes you cannot remain standing or walk, btw) and endured unimaginable agony. But it seems Parexel, despite having the moral responsibility for the outcome of its incompetence and the financial ability to pay proper restitution (estimated yearly revenue of $750 million) is ignoring the victims and using the legal system to avoid liability. The lessons are that $4000 is not worth risking your life over, that that is what you are doing if you are foolish enough to volunteer for medical testing whatever promises you receive not withstanding, and that if you are so foolish you will be left to die by the company responsible without legal recourse should things go wrong. In other words, only an ignorant would sign up for medical testing. I predict a decline in voluntary test subjects, and a rise in the use of prisoners and other 'disposable' human subjects."
It is part of federal medical research laws that prisoners cannot be used for medical testing.
It's a lot cheaper to test drugs on poor Indians than to test them on Americans- all the more so because the Indians have a much harder time suing for negligence.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
I work with various clinical trials in the UK and interest in them actually *increased* following this incident - this was because a lot of people did not realise that you could get paid for doing them.
I think the parent was a bit harsh in saying "only an ignorant would sign up for medical testing" - you should not sign up for clinical trials if you are ignorant. This compound had not previously been tested on humans, so yes there were large risks - but many trials are involving already "human tested" compounds and are merely changing the dose (such a influenza vaccine trials trying diluted doses to see if they are effective). As with everything you have to use your discretion - personally I will participate in trials only if I calculate the risk is minimal to zero, but I still will (admittedly I have the medical and scientific knowledge to make that assessment). I have recently taken part in a flu vaccine trial testing diluted doses - not for the money - but because trials like this are necessary to further our knowledge and ultimately benefit us all.
The drug was tested in mice. And in primates.
Drugs often have different effects in humans than in test animals. There are a number of disease we can sucessfully treat in lab rats that we can't in humans because the biology is different. Sucessful tests in animal studies is merely an inidcator that a drug may work in humans, it's no guarantee. Likewise, some drug that may work well in treating a human disease may never make it to clinical trials, because the animals it was tested on had a bad reaction to it due to their different biology.
The big screwup in this trial was giving it to a number of patients, for the first time, only minutes apart. This is NEVER supposed to be done with a new drug. (There are clinical trials going on one floor above me right now. Everyone in the place shudders when they heard these idiots did that). You always test which you think is a very small dose (like these poeple did, thinking it was 500x less than what they thought would be a safe dose from the animal models), then you wait for a few days to make sure there are no major reactions to it. Injecting numerous people within minutes is crazy. If they'd merely wated an hour before trying to inject the 2nd person, they would have stopped, and there would only be one person with a toasted immune system right now.
There will always be occasional bad results in drug trials. This one was greatly exacerbated by the incompetence of those performing it.
Are you talking about SCID mice? I'd argue that those are very very far from 'normal' human immune systems, and might not have yielded much better safety data than the mice they used. It would be another nice model to test in, but it's still going to have a very different respnse to many agents than a fully human system/body.