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The Problems With Drug Testing
gallifreyan99 writes: Every drug you take will have been tested on people before it—but that testing process is meant to be tightly controlled, for the safety of everyone involved. Two investigations document the questionable methods used in many studies, and the lack of oversight the FDA seems to have over the process. First, drugs are increasingly being tested on homeless, destitute and mentally ill people. Second, it turns out many human trials are being run by doctors who have had their licenses revoked for drug addiction, malpractice and worse.
Have the test subject read a Slashdot summary. If it makes sense, the subject is on drugs!
Well, you passed the drug test, but I'm going to fire you anyway. Reason for firing is...you took a drug test.
What does this story have to do with Linux?
First, drugs are increasingly being tested on homeless, destitute and mentally ill people.
Name another group of the population willing to be guinea pigs for experimental medication? Prison inmates also comes to mind but not much else.
Second, it turns out many human trials are being run by doctors who have had their licenses revoked for drug addiction, malpractice and worse.
It's the American Dream to have made mistakes but to venture out into new avenues. Is one condemned for life not to at least use some of the talents acquired through years of school and experience just because they fell down! If not we're condemning people to a life of servitude at Walmart or 7-11 when they could be serving a useful purpose like pushing through drug test results.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I went in for a drug test one time. All they wanted was some piss. They didn't have any drugs for me to test, at all!
I have never, and will never, submit to a drug test. In fact, in the past decade, every single time I have been on the hunt for a new job and on the phone with an HR person, I have been silently practicing my vitriolic rant should they ask.
As of yet, nobody has asked, so nobody has gotten my rant.
People who get paid to piss in a cup for someone elses amusement are called prostitutes, and honstly, I have nothing against honest prostitutes; its only the ones who delude themselves into thinking they are something else that I take issue with.
just pull a hobby lobby and say I'm on a drug that is part of my religion and you can't test me for it.
Not to be seen as a classist biggot, but if someone homeless or destitute, but understand the nature of the proposition, why shouldn't they be able to enter an agreement to test drugs that 1) might help whatever the condition being treated is and 2) render them with some income? The same opportunities should be afforded them as others. You can't exclude someone because they are homeless or destitute. I would argue that Mentally-Ill persons can not enter into such an agreement knowingly (without the consent of a care giver), and unless the drug was treating for that ailment, any mental side-effects would be difficult to discern from the original mental illness, and render the result suspect anyways.... just by $0.02
FTFY:
"What in the Wide World of Sports is a-going on here!? I hired you people to get a little track laid, not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots! " - Slim Pickens as Taggart in "Blazing Saddles"
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Dude, they're not talking about drug tests where your employer wants to check if you're high on crack cocaine.
They're talking about drug tests where a new experimental drug needs to be tested, first on mice and then humans, to see if it's safe enough for FDA approval.
Right there with you, but that isn't the kind of drug testing TFA is talking about. This is referring to "clinical trial" tests as part of the approval process for new-to-market pharmaceuticals.
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Unlicensed doc: "The police called about a murderous drug-fueled rampage. Who did you say that test subject #37 was?"
Assistant: "Abby someone."
Doc: "Abby who?"
Assistant: "Abby... Normal."
To be fair, he was only confused about this because the summary was complete and utter crap.
Most jobs I've had to have a test before I could show up the first day. The past two not so much, with the current job, and I quote HR "Whatever drug you were taking in the interview, we really want you to keep taking it".
So basically, leave it to HR to always adopt a position that is not usually in your best interests.
This is an outrage and a waste. We must switch to testing on the successful and the smart, who have nothing else to contribute anyway!
Sure, malpractice, drug addiction and, especially, the unspecified "worse" are known to cause people to quickly forget all the training they've ever received in the medical school, and all the practice they got before losing their license.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
From a humanitarian perspective, the quandary is "Do we want to allow the weakest among us to make decisions they are unqualified to properly weigh?"
I will leave the ethics to others, but ultimately, as future consumers of these tested pharmaceuticals, do we want to rely on results that are likely skewed because the test subjects were also taking heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
not all mentally ill people require a caregiver... in fact I'd imagine a lot of people fall into the "mentally ill" and are of perfectly sound mind and judgement. mild depression is a mental illness, some people just call that "being sad" other Mentally ill. General anxiety disorder, alcoholism, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder. all are entirely possible to have and be perfectly sound mind. but anyone who's dealt with them (or the people suffering from them in the case of NPD and BPD) know it's a mental illness. But they do not need a caregiver to enter into agreements like this.
Now seriouslly mentally ill that require a caregiver... yes. but the vast majority of mentally ill do not need a caregiver.
Hear hear!
We should remove other decisions from the weakest among us. Why let them enter into legal contracts regarding their own health and finance when we're certainly more capable of doing it for them. We're just protecting them, after all.
Look, none of this is common place. It's very rare. Why? Because if this happens, then the multi-million dollar trial you paid for is worthless and would have to be redone. I'm working on setup of the data handling for a phase 1 clinical trial right now and there is no way in hell we would let a doctor with issues (ethical or otherwise) anywhere near the trial. Any data they collect would be suspect and could not be used. Homeless person that is taking a lot of meds already? I don't think so. I don't want to deal with trying to figure out which drug was doing what. Ideally, they would only be on our drug or a placebo (sugar pill), nothing else. Bottom Line: There is just too much money tied up in an already risky clinical trial to not do it right.
I have never, and will never, submit to a drug test.
While I am in favor of voting with my feet (so to speak), most of us can't afford to remain steadfast in our convictions when it comes to keeping our mortgage paid and our kids fed.
I had a drug test in 1996, and again in 2001, and a pair of them in 2013. I'm now subject to random testing, which irks me to no end. Unfortunately, there's no other game in town that wants to pay me six figures and not test me -- at least not one I've found yet.
To be fair, he was only confused about this because the summary was complete and utter crap.
Yeah, the summary is shit. Maybe we should have it tested.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If I was homeless and had a crack at suing a big pharma company for millions with absolutely nothing to lose, I think I'd take a shot at it.
It's not like they could sue me back. Just need to find a lawyer who wants a 50% take of the damages.
testing drugs is monotonous, time consuming work normally outsourced to college grad students. When these arent available, or are unwilling to accept such a droll assignment as part of their education, the task can and certainly is reassigned to members of the medical community desparate to regain good standing. Test subjects are often compensated at a level only seen as commensurate to an audience of the destitute. $250 to test a drug that at its worst can kill you, is quite a bargain for someone who hasnt seen shelter or a hot meal in a month. Finally, the nature of the drug generally has to be questioned.
In many countries Americas "breakthrough" drugs are categorically refused on the ground that they do no more than placebo, and are sometimes just too god damn dangerous. In the united states, all a pharmaceutical company needs to do is essentially demonstrate an overall level of safety, not the effectiveness of a given prescription drug to ensure its acceptance in the market. That drug is then paradoxically marketed directly to the public. Everything from asthma medication to narcotics for chronic pain and insomnia are presented to the end user and the question duly raised to them, "Ask your doctor is $DRUG is right/ok/good for you." The commercial is then interlaced with a laundry list of side-effects and dangerous if not outright fatal complications that can develop as a result of using the particular drug being marketed. Results from drug tests and studies are sometimes mentioned, but are always downplayed as "a small number of" or "users may rarely" in describing what exactly could come about as a negative consequence of using a particular drug. We dont test drugs to make sure theyre safe. We test them to make sure their safe enough not to damage the ROI and marketability of a drug by introducing too many outright fatal or debilitating side effects.
Good people go to bed earlier.
do we want to rely on results that are likely skewed because the test subjects were also taking heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine?
Wow... at first I was gonna respond with something about how I don't ever want the right to make decisions about my own body to be taken away from me, but then I noticed that little tidbit at the very end.
You do realize that homelessness and drug additions do not go hand-in-hand, right?
..but, but, (failed) f1r$t p0$+!
My dad almost lost both of his legs because his doctor insisted that his condition is so severe that he needs experimental medication. The 1st round of medication did nothing to make him better. After he started the 2nd round of medications i got hold of the paperwork that he fscking doctor had my dad to sign. She was doing experiments on him on behalf of a US company and had my dad fooled that it's the only way. So after years of my dad lining in excruciating pain i dragged him to another doctor, at another hospital, who applied a standard medical procedure and he was fixed in 2 months.
The murderous doctor (while my dad was in the hospital, there were at least 2 other patients on experimental medication who died) was sporting a nice new BMW high-end car when i got my dad out of there. Way more expensive that she could have afforded from her salary + standard bribes extorted from the patients.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Actually, I would expect a homeless person to have a completely different metabolism. So yes, that would make them unfit for testing drugs for the general population.
Well, putting aside the question of whether or not this practice is exploitative, I see a greater concern in the fact that they are testing on a group that may not be representative of the general population. If, for example, the people you are testing on are disproportionately severe alcoholics or drug addicts, you might get a disproportional incidence of side effects that will skew your results. Ethics aside, it seems like bad scientific practice to me.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
So my mother has a Ph.D in experimental psychology and knows a thing or two about how to design experiments, how to avoid systematic bias, how to distinguish that from random error, and in the admittedly non-objective opinion of her son, is quite sharp about identifying sources of those in methodologies. After raising three children she tries to restart her career. At first the only work she could find was a lowly temp job entering survey responses from a drug trial into a database. Turns out that the forms completed by the doctors and patients surveyed left answers to many questions blank. So how is she instructed by those managing the data entry to handle those cases? She is told to systematically select particular answers to particular questions. And which answers? The answers consistent with the drug being effective and harmless.
Now you do not have to be a Ph.D. to spot a problem with that. Hell, my German Shepherd could probably do that. But maybe as a scientist herself the violation of scientific integrity stung too strongly and my mother insistently raised complaints within the company. And how far did those go to correct the "mistaken" guidelines for data entry? Absolutely nowhere.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
...actually to be completely accurate: TFT was crap. TFS had plenty to tell you which kind of drug testing this was about. SO our wonderful OC couldn't bring himself to get past TFT before commenting... pretty much average for /.
Personally I kind of wanted to rant after reading TFT and was severely disappointed when I read TFS to find nothing new or of interest so didn't bother to go anywhere near TFA but did scan TFC to find if anyone decided to stick to TFT's subject anyway!
Not all drug trials are efficacy trials.
A competent barrister would agree to 40% and accrue the remaining ten in interest from the client's draws prior to settlement.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Honestly, that's the bit that surprised me. If the payoff exceeded the potential legal exposure I don't doubt that you'd be able to find contractors willing to vivisect the homeless; but I am surprised that 'studies' on such a population(heavily weighted as it is with potentially confounding mental and physical morbidity, difficult to track over anything but the short term, etc.) would be treated as adequate.
From what friends in biology tell me, I gather that the reviewers would spit on you if you tried to do a rodent study by 'eh, we set out a nonlethal trap in the basement of the building and used whatever mice wandered in'. Obviously you can't order custom humans the way you can standardized mouse strains; but impoverished homeless people seem like about the least desireable study population you could imagine, except for the cheap and highly unlikely to sue you bit.
Of course not. Before you get to see if the drug works in people strung out on meth (efficacy), you have to see if the drug is safe for people strung out on meth (Phase 1 tests).
How many drugs cure cancer and are safe for patients not strung out on meth that get thrown out?
To be fair, he was only confused about this because the summary was complete and utter crap.
Yea, but if you READ the article, it's pretty clear what the summary means..
Lesson learned? Yep, READ the article before posting comments.....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I have no idea how that is relevant to anything I said.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
So basically, leave it to HR to always adopt a position that is not usually in your best interests.
So, HR isn't looking out for my best interest? Shocker! (not!)
Just in case you don't already know, HR is NOT there to protect you, they are there to protect the company. So be VERY careful when you take a "problem" to them to solve, because you can bet they won't be looking out for your interests.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
not all mentally ill people require a caregiver... in fact I'd imagine a lot of people fall into the "mentally ill" and are of perfectly sound mind and judgement
Mr. Lebowski is disabled.
If you have insights to share about the quality of reporting at Medium.com, you've failed to convey them, so your post just reads as "Derp."
You're coming across as stupid, like you're a teenager or an arrested-development libertarian type. Of course we should help the less capable and less informed make better choices. That's what patient advocates are for. Taking advantage of people's desperation to make them lab rats is obviously evil.
That's how many people (mostly children) have died of malaria since the investigators knew they had a working vaccine in the mid-90's.
That vaccine might actually see the light of day this year, but the regulators are hinting that they might deny approval because it's not tremendously effective in infants.
Because, you know, IN FUCKING THEORY, somebody might get injured from the vaccine.
I'm sorry, the blood of ten million mostly-children on the hands of regulators gets me a bit worked up. And now they're staring at their naval because an investigator might also have a drinking problem? Oh, man, I better hit submit before I say something I might regret.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You do realize that homelessness and drug additions do not go hand-in-hand, right?
You should get to know some actual homeless people. I have worked with quite a few through my mother-in-law's church. I would estimate that more than 90% of them have serious substance abuse problems.
> We should remove other decisions from the weakest among us.
It is not about removing decisions from the weakest among us.
It is about limiting the power of the most powerful among us.
> I have never, and will never, submit to a drug test.
And it shows. Because only someone totally stoned out of their gourd would think this story has anything to do with drug screening.
Be glad that you are, for the moment, healthy enough to maintain that attitude. When you develop something that your lifestyle says you should never get, I hope the rest of us have figured out the problem for you already.
And when we let you die anyway because in 2014 you called our concern "Wackadoodle", well you can be sure I voted "abstain" so you have other people to blame.
To be more specific, homeless, destitute, and mentally ill people are not necessarily genotypically representative, and dangerous reactions may not be found when they should have been. Doctors with their licenses revoked isn't on the surface as big of a deal, other than the inability to be certain the study studied what it intended to, let alone having any confidence in the results.
But I'm sure you have 100% confidence in your genetics and lifestyle, and have no reason to expect to be taking anything that had to pass human trials. I suppose you could get hit by a meteor and bypass the whole aging thing completely.
I suppose I could go on preemptively admonishing your short-sightedness, but I suppose you could claim you don't need glasses.
life ain't, wasn't, and won't be.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
You can acronym like a MFer.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
So, for people like you who feel they can not afford to put their money where their mouths are it is vitally important to use your mouth to support anyone who does take that risk. You must adopt a policy of publicly supporting anyone who refuses drug testing for any reason at all. For you, those people must get a reflexive benefit of the doubt. It is the least you can do.
FYI, some states forbid random testing as a condition of continued employment. California and Massachusetts come to mind. Some let employers do whatever they want, for example Nevada.
Construction companies drug screen at employment inception and when there's an accident.
It's unlawful search (and seizure of your body fluids), but hell, it's a free country... you can work for yourself.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Or, much worse for us (but probably to the delight of the pharmaceutical industry), the terrible side effects will be masked by the symptoms of exposure, malnutrition and chronic alcohol abuse.
I try to tell people that's basically the same outcome as "praying to God"...you might get some response, but it's just as often a plague instead of "help"
You do realize that it takes money to sue someone correct? Well, technically you could file yourself but you will quickly lose because a laymen is not going to understand the required procedures even assuming they could figure out the correct paperwork to file to get the case started.
Very few lawyers work pro bono. If any risk at all existed in the case (including to their reputation) lawyers can and often do refuse cases.
No, it's not practical for a homeless person to sue anyone. In a criminal case a lawyer must be provided if the person can not afford one, but that is not true with civil cases.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
What does this story have to do with Linux?
I assume you were going for "funny".
But on the off chance you (or some reader) is asking this seriously...
Slashdot is about things that are of interest to nerds. The approval process for new drugs (which might save, enhance, damage, or end their lives) is one of those subjects.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's a good (and challenging) question.
The argument about whether results could be generalized has already been made.
The other argument I've come across is one about the extent to which people are free when they are desperate.
Basically, the argument (and it is made for a whole range of things, not just drug testing) is that if someone is sufficiently desperate then their freedom to choose not to do something for money is compromised (because it may be a choice between doing that thing and starving, although in that case you could argue that the not-starving-but-doing-something-awful option is better).
It is kind of like (but by no means the same as) the idea that a person's freedom to choose is compromised if they are having a gun pointed at their head. You could argue that they are 'free' to refuse whatever they are being directed to do, but (from the above perspective) the likelihood of getting their head blown off compromises their freedom to choose. Obviously this latter case is a a bit more overt, and people would generally agree that the person with a gun pointed at their head is not really free than they would for the destitute-and-drug-testing thing.
(That's my understanding of the freedom argument, anyway. It is a bit simplistic, though.)
>If I was homeless and had a crack at suing a big pharma company for millions
If you had a crack at suing a big pharma company then you'd have money and therefore probably wouldn't be homeless. Your premise is flawed.
Unless, of course, you think that there are lawyers willing to take on a case against big pharma for no money up front? In which case, your premise is also flawed.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
The easy way for a doctor to have his license revoked it going outside of mainstream medicine. Reading too much medicine research papers can lead to such situation, and it seems a perfect fit to run human drug trials.
I'd be willing to bet that better than 50% of that 90% are mentally ill and self medicating with street drugs and alcohol. And though they may be addicts they are addicts because of the mental illness not necessarily because they like doing the drugs.
See when Reagan gutted the mental health system in this country so he could funnel the money to the defense industry (Gotta fund that Star Wars Defense Initiative) most of the mentally ill ended up homeless as states lost federal funding for mental health. There was a dramatic spike in the number of homeless in the 1980's and most of them were the mentally ill that were discharged from state hospitals for budget reasons. Don't get me wrong, the involuntary commitment thing we were doing to the mentally ill up to that point was all kinds of evil but the loss of funding did as much damage as wrongs it prevented. There are many many mentally ill that would voluntarily submit to treatment if it didn't cost anything because they don't have money and we've got a lot better drugs these days to treat things like schizophrenia than we did in the 80's.
I'd also like to point out that many of the homeless addicts that aren't mentally ill and not addicted to alcohol could be productive citizens if the war on drugs ended. They end up homeless because their addiction inevitably ends up giving them a criminal record that prevents employment. Combine the lack of employment because of a criminal record with the addiction and you end up with a homeless person. Unfortunately an alcohol addiction makes people pretty much unemployable due to the impairment and the massive health problems it causes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The author is surprised and outraged that in order to develop drugs for mental illness, those drugs are being tested on the mentally ill?
Where's all the pro-science crowd who keeps telling us to blindly trust medical science when the stories of people (mistakenly) avoiding certain well-tested drugs come up?
The rhetoric does nothing but defeat their actual viewpoint and this is why -- bad science is being done, and it needs to be accounted for to the sceptics, no matter who insane they may seem. Bad science is the enemy of good science because it undermines trust in the system.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
If the case is good, there's definitely some lawyer who will take it for a 30% cut of the winnings. There is or at least was recently a pretty serious glut of lawyers on the market.
From a humanitarian perspective, the quandary is "Do we want to allow the weakest among us to make decisions they are unqualified to properly weigh?"
Alternatively we could choose not to treat them like a helpless puppy or small child and accept that their decisions are as valid as yours and mine.
Honestly judging someone's qualifications to make decisions based on their financial state is pretty condescending.
Your sampling is skewed towards the homeless population that is willing to go to a church.
You should get to know some other homeless people.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Because they're not just homeless. They're poor, likely have no family support, little edgucation and are not generally equipped to be make that sort of decision. And if something does go wrong they likely have no insurance they can use to seek help. Sure, if they find out its related to the testing the drug company might have to pay. But if it gives them cancer 5yrs later?
I'm all for adults making their own choices. But some people that appear to be adults, are not, for a variety of reasons. We should not be exploiting their sad lot in life to spare ourselves some discomfort. Pay more for testing, attract regular people. If you care about the homeless make community service part of the testing gig.
Your sampling is skewed towards the homeless population that is willing to go to a church.
They don't go to church. The church goes to them. My wife's mother works through her church to reach out to homeless people, give them food and blankets, and help them find day labor so they can earn both money and self-respect. She often asks me and my kids to go with her. We find people living in parks or under bridges, etc. My experience is that nearly all of the homeless have deep interrelated problems, including substance abuse, mental illness, alienation from family and friends, mistrust of authority (including people like me that are offering to help), etc. I can think of only two or three people where our efforts have made any lasting difference, but hey, even turning two or three lives around is an accomplishment, and I would rather be out with my kids and their grandmother doing that, than sitting at home watching TV.
Honestly it's more of a joke looking from the outside, enjoy your 'freedom'.
the 'death' is what attracts people to the drugs.
TV and radio and even billboards around me are full of ads from lawyers who are eager to sue for anything related to medical liability. What color is the sky on your planet?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It is not about removing decisions from the weakest among us.
It is about limiting the power of the most powerful among us.
Is there something I am not understanding here? Looks to me like your second statement is the excuse to implement the first.
"His name was James Damore."
Bad research -- this is the major gotcha of drug advocacy. Science has proven recreational use of drugs, notably marijuana, causes all manner of mental and physical problems. This is a matter of fact.
Drug advocacy groups like drugpolicy.org and NORML use so-called quack doctors to produce counter-research that state the exact opposite. These are not clinical trials, they are run by "experts" that are retired, or barred from practicing medicine, and are often life-long drug advocates and users themselves and are not impartial at all.
Want proof? When a medical journal reports on the dangers of marijuana, drug advocacy groups are quick to post rebuttals that insult the authors and blame the sample size only. What they don't provide -- what they NEVER provide -- is a shred of peer reviewed medical research that indicates the contrary. Because there is no such evidence!
I don't care if you are for drugs, or against drugs. Just ask yourself, "Why do drug advocates have to lie to me?" If drugs are so good to use, and so safe, can't they stand on their own, even under scrutiny? They can't, so the fake experts and quack doctors are called in to produce unscientific results in an attempt to rebuke what real science has determined.
When you run what drug advocates say through the filter of peer-reviewed medical research, very little of their claims are valid, and those that are tend to be for people in exceptional conditions and almost _always_ involve marijuana use with the psychoactive components removed or greatly minimized.
Facts, science, and medicine do not support recreational drug use. So drug advocates rely heavily on a misinformation campaign to cast doubt on facts, science and medicine to justify what they're endorsing. The drug industry is taking a page directly from the tobacco industries' playbook, word for word.
See when Reagan gutted the mental health system in this country
In fairness to Reagan, 'gutting' the mental health system was a fairly popular idea at the time because psychiatrists couldn't distinguish between sane people and insane people, and were imprisoning sane people.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Speaking as a university researcher ...
I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment of your post, but in research ethics the concept of coercion is often taken much more broadly than it might be in typical parlance.
The idea is that if the incentives for research participation become too large, someone might not be able to rationally turn down an offer, and might be compelled to do something they do not want to do. I.e., you can coerce someone with rewards that are too large, just as you can coerce them with punishments that are too large. The idea is to prevent people from feeling like they sold their soul to the devil.
Where this gets complicated is that what is considered to be a coercive incentive depends on the potential participant's circumstances. So if you're homeless, you might feel compelled to do something you wouldn't otherwise do because you're desperate. I've been on research proposals where $35 or so USD was considered coercive because that amount of money was so large for the area of the world that they were recruiting from at the time.
I'm not sure how this intersects with this story--I agree that in itself, there's nothing wrong with recruiting homeless individuals. You also don't want to deny them opportunities that others have. But by the same token, you don't want to take advantage of their circumstances to make an undignified proposal something they can't refuse (not saying it is undignified, just that it probably needs more scrutiny, which it may or may not have had).
We're still talking abusing the plight of a person. I don't know about you, but in my books that's kinda immoral. According to our law books, that's even illegal under certain conditions.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh yeah, like they have a choice. A decision entails that there is a viable alternative. And I kinda doubt they go "hmm... become a human guinea pig or pursue my career in advertising...".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What decision for fuck's sake? "Allow them to stick needles in me or starve?"
That is no decision. That's like me offering you the decision to dance for my amusement or end up with a bullet in your head, and then me claiming that dancing like an idiot was your own free will.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That far already? Not just considering them a "lower class" but already a "lower being"?
Just so I can confirm my prejudice: Democrat or Republican?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"You're coming across as stupid, like you're a teenager or an arrested-development libertarian type."
Mother. Fucking. WOOSH.
Summer needs to hurry up and end so idiots like you can get the fuck back to school. Not like it's going to do your slave ass any good.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I don't have my people tested for drugs. For more than one reason. First and foremost, I fear they could find something. Actually, I'm pretty sure they'd find something with one or two of the guys.
Then, why the fuck should I care what they do in their spare time? I'm neither their mommy nor their nanny. I care about them coming to work sober and being able to do their job. That they do. So where's my interest in anything beyond that?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Look, none of this is common place. It's very rare. Why? Because if this happens, then the multi-million dollar trial you paid for is worthless and would have to be redone.
That's why they'll tell you that they aren't doing any drugs and this is the only clinical trial they're participating in, and maybe throw in a fake name for good measure.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Can drug testing be performed through simulation and modeling? Can drugs tested on genetically engineered tissued?
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
Talking to yourself is a sign of Schizophrenia.
Where did I claim that homeless person are 'lower beings'? Please speak for your self and refrain from that dick-headed prejudice.
You have to look at it from a purely biological standpoint. Completely different living and sleeping habits, food intake, body temperature control, and continuous exposure to the outside all result in different metabolism from the general population. That alone will not produce correct results when testing drugs targeted to the general population. Besides, having test subjects who are hardened by living on the streets means, that you have no idea whether you can attribute any of the observed side effects to the drug being tested. e.g. is the subject scratching himself because the medicine makes him feel itchy, or is it a rash from bad hygiene and low vitamin intake?
Is that so difficult to understand?
It's alright this is how Obama-care works. If we got rid of the questionable doctors doing it, they would be replaced by illegal Mexican aliens. So relax and take another pill. The government wouldn't allow anything to harm you, would they? Of course your medicine is safe and we have more medicine to treat the side effects of the medicine, and more medicine to treat the side effects of that medicine. Just think of Obamacare as a subscription service for the latest, greatest pharmaceuticals that Big Medicine can manufacture. Every month you will recieve a new bottle to add to your collection and calm the effects of the previous prescriptions. As an added bonus, the doctors will scratch their head, stare at the chart and say" There's a new clinical trial I can put you in for a pill that cures all this". It won't of course, but it will add to the drama. Support your pharmaceutical companies and they will continue to give you the best medication they can mass produce at maximum profit, within the bounds of their intellectual property.
Take a pill!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
They'll just advocate "take a pill" like a car salesman advocates buying a car..
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The main point these idiots seem to be ignoring is also the fairly obvious point that there are perverse incentives here for the subjects to take part in multiple trials, they can't be monitored properly as they are hard to find (He's dead in a storm drain as a result if the test drugs but we can't find him so he was never part of the study). Also the big one: "Are you suffering any negative effects from these drugs we have a massive financial stake in, remember we're paying you"
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure you don't need to sign any disclaimers when you accept payment to participate in a clinical trial of new drugs, those dumb multinational drug testing companies would never think to cover their ass like that.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
And, more importantly, probably incapable of actually making informed consent to be guinea pigs.
And, quite possibly massive ethical breaches -- because if you're doing experiments on the "homeless, destitute, and mentally ill" without proper consent from someone with the best interests of those people in mind, you're getting into some seriously sketchy stuff.
I know your response is tongue in cheek, but the idea of doctors who have lost their license testing on people who may or may not understand the issue, and who may or may not be representative of the broader populace in terms of how well these drugs work ... that's a little troubling sounding.
To me it sounds like Big Pharma has become what most of us have always suspected, ethically unsound, and only focused on profit and not actually health care.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Really? because its been my experience that most of the people subjected to employment drug testing are the lower salary employees. Then again, I work in IT where most companies don't drug test because they know what the results will be.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
They may not be in good physical health. They may have substance abuse issuse (alcohol or other drugs). They may have mental health issues. This makes me wonder if the myriad of side effects we see for drugs are related to the poor quality of test subjects.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
His intent is pretty obvious, but you must have some axe to grind. Someone who is homeless is obviously not living anything remotely resembling the life that the general population lives. Differing metabolism is just one of the myriad of factors that differentiates the homeless from the general population. This would be like using mensa members to determine if a test for the general population is too easy.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
nah its easier to just shrug it off when I get one wrong. As far as off topic comments go, it hardly even registers compared to the gay nigger brigade still trying to cover natilie portmans hot grits in pants; so overall.... could be worst.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
We should remove other decisions from the weakest among us. Why let them enter into legal contracts regarding their own health and finance when we're certainly more capable of doing it for them. We're just protecting them, after all.
We already do that, you sarcastic prick; it's called a legal guardian.
do we want to rely on results that are likely skewed because the test subjects were also taking heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine?
There are tests for that.
which is why we need to make sure the Shelter Network can actually handle the number of Homeless in a given area.
Its common for a Shelter to have a time at night you have to check in by so you have at least one time in 24 hours you know where a person is.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
From a humanitarian perspective, the quandary is "Do we want to allow the weakest among us to make decisions they are unqualified to properly weigh?"
Yes.
Should the terminally ill be allowed to abuse highly addictive painkillers? Should a teenager be able to get an abortion without parental consent?
You can use that argument to deny anyone bodily self-determination simply by labeling them "weak" or "unqualified".
Whoa, step back from that slope man, it's slippery.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Ah, yes, nothing like dropping the F-bomb and using all upper case to make your point. You must be right, Bill. You absolutely must be.
From Big Pharma's perspective, with the involuntary testing of prison inmates off the table in most Western countries, the homeless population presents a viable alternative who are statistically unlikely to pursue litigation.
From a humanitarian perspective, the quandary is "Do we want to allow the weakest among us to make decisions they are unqualified to properly weigh?"
I will leave the ethics to others, but ultimately, as future consumers of these tested pharmaceuticals, do we want to rely on results that are likely skewed because the test subjects were also taking heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine?
It's not the companies sponsoring the test that somehow try to pick this demographic. It's the people themselves. Most of the tests pay the panelists, but it's not all that much. For someone with a stable job, the small amount usually isn't worth the hassle (have to be at the test location during business hours several times a week sometimes, keeping logs, or whatever). Not to mention not worth the possible health risks. For homeless/unemployed/etc., that's their electric bill for this month. It's enough money to them that they routinely lie about health conditions, drug use, etc. on the consent forms.
Only way to fix it is to offer substantially more money to panelists.
(Source: girlfriend who works as a clinical test manager)
, do we want to rely on results that are likely skewed because the test subjects were also taking heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine?
Are they testing on Wall Street traders now?
You may not be up on the latest way companies get around this. In the fine print you waive your legal right to sue in exchange for arbitration should a dispute arise. And given that most people don't read and understand this stuff before signing the dotted line, how many homeless people do you think will understand this pitfall?
Missing modpoints again so quoting the AC +1 informative:
Speaking as a university researcher ...
I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment of your post, but in research ethics the concept of coercion is often taken much more broadly than it might be in typical parlance.
The idea is that if the incentives for research participation become too large, someone might not be able to rationally turn down an offer, and might be compelled to do something they do not want to do. I.e., you can coerce someone with rewards that are too large, just as you can coerce them with punishments that are too large. The idea is to prevent people from feeling like they sold their soul to the devil.
Where this gets complicated is that what is considered to be a coercive incentive depends on the potential participant's circumstances. So if you're homeless, you might feel compelled to do something you wouldn't otherwise do because you're desperate. I've been on research proposals where $35 or so USD was considered coercive because that amount of money was so large for the area of the world that they were recruiting from at the time.
I'm not sure how this intersects with this story--I agree that in itself, there's nothing wrong with recruiting homeless individuals. You also don't want to deny them opportunities that others have. But by the same token, you don't want to take advantage of their circumstances to make an undignified proposal something they can't refuse (not saying it is undignified, just that it probably needs more scrutiny, which it may or may not have had).
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Just let the consumer take their lumps..
My particular niche of IT centers around healthcare, which includes insurers, which pretty much mandates preemployment screening at a minimum.
Which company, which drug?
Um.... me too, and still never been even asked. In fact my last employer was basically a hospital (or rather if them and the hospital were facebook friends, their relationship status would be 'its complicated'). Now the actual insurance industry, that I could understand....they seem more um.... uptight.
Hospitals themselves I am pretty sure have the same issue as IT given what I have heard from the horses mouthes about doctors and drug habbits
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
...provided it ain't Summer. Have you ever been in such a place? Trust me, in a warm summer night, anywhere else is nicer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You really don't notice how condescending and patronizing you sound? Really?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
not only am i homeless and mentally ill but i am also a drug addict who has been tested for years by various institutions. the problem with drug testing as done by the fda is that it no longer has the best interest of the masses in mind. it is controlled by big corporations as everything else in this glorious capitalist society of ours is. the problem with drug testing as done in a cup by me in a bathroom is that the drugs i take do not show up on the six, twelve or even eighteen panel litmus test. there will always be a new illusive drug just beyond scope of detection.
It is what it is.
Unless he had been drinking methylated spirits while reading and signing the disclaimer
Bias results. The FDA doesn't run very many independent tests. Congress doesn't fund it to conduct lots of testing on its own, so it has to rely on studies provided by the drug companies who are at the same time looking for their products to be approved by the FDA. That is a huge opportunity for bias. Actually, most federal regulators have this problem. Each Cabinet Secretary is charged with a built-in conflict of interest, The agency regulates an industry it also promotes and the special interests, industry lobbyists get s big influence by their access to Congress and the funding process, so they can effectively limit the effectiveness of the agency to conduct independent unbiased tests. The Conservative rap that government interfers with business is largely offset by the subsidies and access business groups get from government through legislation. I think this is most obvious at Agriculture. Corruption of the food supply is at least as serious as any problems with drug approvals, especially when chemical and agribusiness interests push food processing and substituting of profitable additives into the food supply. The mere substitution of corn syrup for beet and cane sugar because of a cost surge in the 1990s has huge unforseen implications not seen by testing procedures that give the benefit of the doubt to the business people seeking the approvals. That one change probably has led to the obesity epidemic we are seeing now because the way fructose is converted directly into fat was not known at the time. It was assumed that it was just a cheaper carbohydrate substitute, but it is not. The implication is that to the extant the FDA and Agriculture Department support that change and support the business plans of the processed food industry will drive the high cost of Medical Care for decades to come, including Medicare. If the government decided that the food processing industry has made a huge mistake that is going to cost the nation trillions, the reaction would be as serious as it was to tobacco companies. The problem is how much government really is in bed with business interests and not the advisories some Republicans claim they are.
It's pretty clear that Slashdot summaries are only tested on the incompetents and mentally ill. (Alternately, those are the people writing them.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
BOOM! Headshot!
Nowhere in that statement is the word lower, class, or being used. It's not even implied. You're making shit up as usual. I don't think I've heard you mention it in this thread, but could you confirm for my prejudices if you are a D or an R?
I am sooooo glad that someone on this site is thinking of the goddamned children (and they are damned aren't they? What loving god would give them malaria?). I know that we, as a society, make the best decisions for the entire population by simply thinking about those goddamned children. I think about them all day, every day. Sometimes I think I might think too much but I just tell myself that I'm making up for those of us who don't have thoughts about children. I'm just so happy that I'm not alone in this world. I'm thrilled that there are others who think about children and get emotionally worked up about it. It really shows how deeply you care about those goddamned kids and how much you think about them, their feelings, and what's best for them. Don't ever stop thinking about those goddamned children!
You're representative of the homeless community because you've fucking triple classed. Triple classed guys always fit into the "knower of everything, master of nothing" category. Drop the fighter part and rework your XP into the rogue class. If you're a good rogue you'll be just as powerful as any fighter. Rogues are in high demand, but industry knows that fighters mostly suffer from the dumb jock syndrome, and so they don't want them around (unless they're hiring for soldiers or cops). The mage was a good choice, even if you are a shitty one. I mean, what company doesn't want a motherfuckin wizard!
I know a couple 'professional lab rats' that travel from test to test to earn a living. The way they tell it about half the study participants do it fir a living and the other half just want some quick cash, like between jobs or a student. Not homeless and destitute like some posters seem to imply. CHEERS :)
From over here D or R looks like a silly question, considering they're so indistinguishable. Maybe I'm spoiled by having parties that are actually different in their opinions and positions on the political spectrum.
And, bluntly, replace "homeless" with "black" in the statement you quoted and tell me you wouldn't see anything wrong with this either.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So long as you're not evangelizing in the process. If becoming "born again", or being required to listen to sectarian preaching, praying, pledging their to allegiance to some deity, then there is nothing wrong with helping the less fortunate. But IF... aid is dependent upon listening to a bunch of religious crap or performing religious rituals, then that's no different than abusing the less fortunate in drug trials seducing or conscripting them with financial inducements. It a freedom of conscience issue.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire